05 Apr 2023
We had booked a tour from the U.K. with Premier Holidays who used Thomson’s Tours as their appointed agent in South Africa. We stayed in Cale Town / Rovos Rail / Ivory Manor in Pretoria / Victoria Falls Zimbabwe. Sad to say that Thomson’s failed miserably on 2 of our pre paid tours ! The first tour was a full day Winelands tasting tour. The driver arrived 75 minutes late for the pick up - a bad omen - and then whilst driving towards Stellenbosch, he was actually on the phone, driving one handed, trying to arrange vineyards for our visits. This should have been booked and confirmed many month previously when we actually booked the complete package.
At times whilst driving, he was holding up a large paper map with both hands showing us the Cape area ! We did not feel safe whatsoever and when we actually arrived at Lanzerac estate it was clear to see they were not expecting us and merely sat us at a table and placed 2 bottles of red wine on the table with very little expalanation as to its origins etc.
We never got to taste any other wines as the server did not return to our table ! Our driver then took us to Franscheok where he dropped us for lunch. As a group we decided that the tour was already a disaster and would return to Cape Town. The driver refused and told us he would be taking us to Paarl, we insisted he take us back to CT and finally he agreed. He was downright rude, drove very badly and the whole tour was basically a complete waste of a day.
Thompson apologised and arranged for an upgrade on a Zambezi River cruise tour later that week, but surprise surprise when we arrived at the boat, they knew nothing of any upgrade, very embarrassing for our group to say the least. It appears that Thomson’s got the date wrong which is incredible as they had compiled our itinerary for the complete tour. A case of the right hand not knowing what the left was doing. We are waiting to hear further from Thompsons to resolve this matter !