Jun 22, 2016 12:56 PM
17780 Views
It was the worst journey I ever took, courtesy Dpaul. I had earlier packages for Asia and on domestic tours also and going by their reputation I didn't looked at any other operator.
Everything went wrong from day 1, we a family of 4 missed a connecting flight from Helsinki to London as the transfer time was only 40 minutes and due to time taken at the security clearance and the change of gate that too at the extreme corner we missed out the flight and had to fork out 500 euros to buy fresh tickets(yet to hear from Dpaul how to go about claiming refund from airline as normally in such cases you are accommodated free of cost in next flight, as per law International connecting flights need to have 2 hours of change over time). I
t only starts getting unsavoury from here, the contact number provided of the tour manager who was supposed to meet us at London was wrong and later got to know that even the tour manager was not even aware that she has been assigned our group. I communicated to Alok Chaturvedi, Manager about our missed flight still the information didn't get passed on to the person who had come to receive the group at London airport and entire group had to wait for 90 minutes looking for us. Then 2 days at UK was fine as it was nicely taken up by local tour manager Ms Kamal, a seasoned professional and a local guide Shivani was wonderful in her Hindi commentary.
Nightmare started once we left for our onward journey to Paris. Tour Manager again changed, guides left their job at will and others if ever appointed were not capable and without guides it was meaningless to visit historical places, the tour Manager Vinod Aggarwal was clue less about the places and made Paris visit an unforgettable experience, a poor manager with whom we could only sympathize after few days of spats. To cite his inabilities to carry out his task, Vinod Agarwal left 10 people behind including old age couple at a place in Amsterdam(when he started the bus 15 minutes early) and to fend for themselves to reach to Hotel. The hotels that were booked were on the outskirts of the city, few were as good as a Lodge(Best western particularly), I have clicked Pics to show them. I wondered if we were from Economically Weaker Sections of the society to be met with such a treatment. The breakfasts were awful, looked Especially customized for DPaul with no fruits, not even breads what to talk of something remotely vegetarian Indian food. The so called sight seeing(they term as orientation tours, beware please) was only from outside sitting in the bus coaches and if et al it was done, we had to shell out hefty Euros for that. The coach was uncomfortable and our complain to replace it was refused with an excuse of no availability of other coach and it's driver was hardly accommodating so much so that he even refused to stop for a kid to pee and relented after half an hour of requests., No one dared to even argue with him as that masculine Vagabond would threaten to call up police stating discipline. Itinerary was planned in such ill mannered way that you would travel a distance of approximately 300-400 Kms on a daily basis and local sight seeing was difficult since the hotels were located far off only to increase travel time and in the evening you cannot go on your own as Hotels were outside main city. Only saving grace was Indian dinners that still were at decent places but you had to stand in a long queue as if you had to make a queue for Langer, still acceptable after the entire day toll on your soul, mind and body. Last but not the least they made us travel to Helsinki from Italy in reverse direction to make our journey more painful with 8 additional hours. Dpaul to make a money beyond the stated package called everyone before tour that everyone is requesting and has consented(except you) to travel through Eurostar(jacked up cost by Rs.6000/- per member) and that would cut travel time from London to Paris, later on we found no one requested and everyone was fooled by the same communication. To make matter worse it actually spoiled the whole day, eurostar was around 12 noon from London reaching Paris in the early evening hours and then Tour Manager taking us to useless Fragona perfume outlet just to kill time and then to Dinner wasting the entire day.
DPaul’s charged full amount as adult for my childs aged 9 and 14 yrs and handed them half tickets every where at the sight seeing.
Dpaul’s sold the package to everyone(citing discounted for early booking) at the same cost, to some at an exchange rate of Euro as 71, to others at 74, eventually calculating everyone’s package at equivalent conversion rate of 77+. It is amounting to cheating and fraud.
Dpauls you have mastered Asian countries for outbound travel but you need to go miles before you are able to called as Operator with a national fame.
I would not recommend DPaul to anyone, don’t fall into trap of low cost, you may find inbuilt riders to inflate cost once you have given them initial money and then it is for them to take you on a ride.
