Nov 25, 2006 02:25 PM
11610 Views
(Updated Nov 27, 2006 10:24 AM)
My husband and I had a bad experience when we opted for Cox and Kings as our tour operator for our first visit outside of India to Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. We travelled on Nov 3 and just 4 days prior to the tour, we were asked for pay an additional charge of USD90 per person, reason being that they were falling short of the minimum guaranteed pax for the tour. Since we had already paid the entire amount which was non refundable, we had no option but to pay up the additional USD90 per person which we did. I find it difficult to believe that Cox and Kings was not aware that the guaranteed no. of pax were not being met beforehand. I would also like to mention that the Sales staff whom we interacted with was pretty junior and therefore were unable to answer our queries. They would always promise to get back to us on our queries and would happily forget to do so.
On the tour, we found that the itinerary for some of the places like Malaysia and Singapore were not planned well. We saw so many animal shows that all of us were suffering from 'Animal Show Fatigue' by the time the tour ended. Besides this, Cox and Kings should remove A'Famosa Resort in Malaysia from their itinerary as it is a poor man's disney land. There is nothing worth seeing in that resort and their bathrooms are infested with cockroaches. The rooms too were pretty ordinary and instead of spending one entire day in A'Famosa, we could have actually left for Singapore and spent a day there because we got to spend just one day in Singapore and had to rush on with the city tour and sentosa island all in one day. All the hotels in Thailand were ordinary though we were promised that we would be put up in good 3* hotels. In Malaysia, we spent one day at Genting Highlands which is a sort of hill station and it was pretty cold there. Cox & Kings forgot to inform us to carry woollies because of which all the passengers had a FREEZING time there.
To add to this, the tour operator was unfriendly and rude and was only looking for chances to make quick money by way of tips from passengers which Cox and Kings claimed to have included in the tour package. When some of us refused to pay tips, the tour operator Ms Pervin Shroff was so incensed that she got personal with people like me because I told her that I will complain against her rude and unprofessional behaviour. To get back at me, on the last day of our trip at the singapore airport, she started using foul language and threatened to call the cops if my husband and I did not apologise to her!
When we came back to India, we complained to her supervisor hoping that they would take some action against her. They havent taken any action yet. We are still waiting for them to revert back to us. When I look back, i feel that shoddy service is acceptable to some extent, but bad tour '(mis)managers' can spoil your entire trip and I am afraid to say that it is exactly what happened with my trip. All this for some tips which I refused to give.
