Dear Mrs. Lauren,
We are sorry you did not enjoy our top-rated Lake Como tour in a small group (max. 12 people), which we organize in a small group unlike all other tours of other agencies with 50+ people in a crowded bus.
We confirm the we refunded you 65% of the cost of the tour that you paid (100€) and we hope that this is a good solution for you.
Kindly note that on the day you did the tour we personally contacted all the participants to ask for their feedback and it was excellent as always.
Since we started to organize our tour about 1 year ago, it is the only negative review we ever received for this tour since we started it 1 year ago, so we have a doubt that either you confused this tour with some other activity you booked or there has been some misunderstanding. Mr. Martino is one of our best guides and you can read almost a hundred of top-rated review online about his tours in Lake Como & Milan (he is also a renowned cinema & theater actor and director in Italy and has been a professional tour guide for over 20 years in Milan & Lake Como area with 200+ of positive reviews for his tours, including VERY positive reviews for the tour you did).
Kindly let us allow to share more details here below.
You booked a small group tour in Lake Como and your guide met you on time in Central Station of Milan, near the giant apple statue as mentioned in the tour description, at 9:15. The tour was fully booked on that day (2 April 2024), and no other participant of the tour expressed any complaint of any kind - quite the contrary, we contacted all the participants of the tour once it finished (as we always do, because the feedback of our clients is very important for us) and everybody confirmed that they enjoyed the tour a lot. There were several participants in this tour who were older than 70 years old, but there was no issue with anyone else feeling ''left behind regularly'' (left where? Everyone was staying with the guide all the time...).
The guide Mr. Martino, after meeting you and all other participants on time at 9:15 in Central Station, allowed you some free time before the train departure (9:43), so everybody had about 30 min. of free time, given that all participants were on time, which allowed everyone to had a coffee or tea before taking the train. The guide clearly showed to everyone, which train and which platform you should reach after the coffee break - and no other participant had any difficulty to do it at all. Everybody was given an opportunity of having some free time before the train ride, because the guide would guarantee you can have a seat, on the train so you did not have to wait 30 minutes on the platform, because your guide did it for you.
We are the ONLY company in Milan & Lake Como area that organizes a small-group tour that includes Como, Bellagio & Varenna, because all other travel agencies organize a big group of 50-60 people in a crowded bus in these areas, which is a totally different experience (the price is almost the same).
We even booked a first class return train ticket as a complimentary upgrade for all tour participants and our guide Mr. Martino did his best to find a seat for everybody on the train, because so many people go to Lake Como now in high season, so if you think you can just buy the train ticket by yourself and have a seat there, unfortunately it is not true, because the train companies in Italy sell more tickets than there are places to sit, but our guide will always make sure you will find a seat on the train, since we have priority access.
All the ferries and boats that go from Como to Bellagio can be extremely crowded on some days, and the waiting lines are about 200-300 meters (it may often happen that 300-400 people are not allowed to go on the boat because there are too many people), but not if you have a priority access through a reliable travel agency like ours.
As far as we know, you did not stand in that line for 1 hour - because you booked our tour with a priority access and because our guide Mr. Martino waited in the line instead of you, so you can comfortably skip the line and take a seat on the boat (with a lot of other people who did not have a seat during the boat cruise, because they booked a ticket by themselves and not through a reliable travel agency). None of this is mentioned in your review.
The guide Mr. Martino also confirmed that he personally checked with EVERY single participant of this small group tour today, including you, and that during the train ride back to Milan you never express any concern or complaint.
With all due respect, you spent almost 11 hours with our guide Martino, and you never complained to him, despite he communicated with you the whole day.
At the end of the tour, we even sent you a message on Whatsapp (we can share the screenshot), asking you to share your feedback about the tour (you read the message, but did not reply us).
30 minutes after sending you our message on Whatsapp, we received an email sent to us through Viator, where you mentioned that you did not enjoy the tour and want a refund. We replied to this email that we are extremely sorry that you did not enjoy the tour, and we asked you, how much refund you consider appropriate, but you did not reply to this message. Let me copy/paste here what we wrote in our email as an answer to your refund request:
''Dear Lauren,
We have been working with Martino about 2 years and we always received excellent feedback from his tours, especially in Lake Como and Milan. We will clarify with the guide about what happened today. We are really sorry you did not like the tour, because basically it is the only tour on Lake Como & Bellagio organized as a small tour - all other agencies bring a huge group of 50-60 people (they charge just 10% less then us, approximately), that is why we try to organize a small group.
We also book first class on both trains as complimentary upgrade, even this is not mentioned on the tour's page, and all the tickets alone cost about 60€-70€.
In any case, we really appreciate your suggestions as we are quite a new company and we try to do our best. We have no intention to provide mediocre service (in fact this is the highest rated tour on Como on multiple websites with hundreds of reviews), and we also received positive feedback from other travelers today.
We will be happy to provide a refund for you, please let us know which amount you consider appropriate. We also sent you a message on Whatsapp so you can reply us there too.''
You did not reply to this message as well - in fact, as written in our reply to your email we clearly stated that we will be happy to refund you if you are not happy about it.
After that, instead of answering to our email - which we wrote with our best intentions, you published 1-star review on Viator, which is beyond our understanding, when we directly asked you how much refund you want and what is the best solution for you. We even did not try to prove who is right or wrong (as it often may happen in this cases), but tried to directly find the best option for you (which you ignored).
We strongly believe that sometimes a direct comunication can be the best option - we tried to reach you on WhatsApp (where you read our messages), we replied in less than 15 minutes to your email, however you ignored all of our efforts to find a solution for you, but you never replied anymore, despite previous comunication by email and whatsapp.
Our company is not big, and we started to organize private and small group tours exactly to provide a better quality tours and a better experience and we are always open for a dialogue, we are confident about our service, which can be confirmed by hundreds of reviews online on Viator, Tripadvisor and other websites, and in rare occasions when something is not perfect during the tour, we will always be willing to compensate for the inconvenience caused - just ask us.
It is our priority to have happy clients and refund you if you are not happy, but if you ignore our email and message after we tried to approach you several times, we do not know how else we can help you.
If you think that in high season it is so easy to go there by train and take a ferry, unfortunately it is no true, as it can be extremely crowded and you risk to stand in the line 1 hour for the ferry (and then you will have to stand 2 hours without a seat), you will risk standing in the train for 1 hour (because there are not enough seats) both during the trip there and back, and none of these things happened to you. You also enjoyed the full schedule with a guided trip in Como City, Bellagio & Varenna, so we are deeply surprised that you think there was nothing positive in the tour at all, despite all the efforts we and our guide put there for you.
In any case, we have refunded the amount that we feel might be correct (65% of the cost that you paid) and we wish you all the best.
Kind regards
Marco & Jessica