NO TOUR GUIDE - NO TOUR
FEMALE GOUP MEMBER LEFT STRANDED ALONE IN UNDERGROUND PARKING
SUBCONTRACTED OUT TWICE
We began by getting into a van with discarded papers, empty used take out coffee cups and only a driver, no tour guide, who spoke very broken English. Once settled, he asked where we would like to go.our reply, we want the tour we booked and paid for. He had no idea what we were talking about. We gave him a copy of the tour and he called his employer. He then said I take you to SM Town. Great, we thought he had worked it all out with his employer and our tour guide would meet us there. We arrived, it was closed, didnt open for 30 min and no tour guide. He told us to go look at Gangnam Hand Statue then disappeared, leaving us stranded, outside in the poring rain for the 30 min. He came back, took us inside, we went up to 2nd floor museum, which was not open so we went up one more floor and found a café, where we decided to sit and wait until the museum opened..again, he abandoned us. With no indication as to if or when he would return, 2 of our group set out and scoured the building to find him. 45 min later all 3 arrived back at the café. At this point we were all thourouly disgusted so he had us speak directly to his employer. We were informed that they were subcontracted by Great Exploration Tours at 6am the morning of the tour and told to provide us with a driver and take us where ever we wanted to go.nothing more. This is why we had no tour guide or anyone who knew anything about K-pop and were expected to pay on top of what we had already paid for the tour for entrance fees, lunch which would not be at a K-pop star restaurant as stated in the itinerary etc. You can imagine the devastation on the face of the teenage girl in our party at this point. We discussed our situation, included our driver and due to the combined factors that he knew nothing about K-pop, could not provide anything as stated in the itinerary and his employer was not able to honour the tour booking due to the fact that they were not subcontracted out to do it, we came to the mutual decision that the driver would return back to his employer. Two of our group went with the driver to retrieve items left in the van and two remained in the café. An hour later our two group members returned, one female in an utter state of shock. The driver could not remember where he had parked the van so the entire hour was spent looking for it and she had been left alone, abandoned by the driver inside an underground parking garage. This was the most horrendous experience any of us have ever had.
Great Exploration Tours, your business ethics and representation of Korea tourism needs to be investigated. I received an email stating that a 30US credit will be processed to my credit card.WOW, considering I paid for 4 people on that credit card a total of 460.00US, it seems that their concern and apologizing is also as low as their tour ethics.