From Greenock: Stirling Castle, Culross and Glasgow Private Tour

Before you read this review, I would like to say that Serca Tours were kind to us during this experience, and I would book with them direct if I had know about this. Top private tours seem to be the issue, I spoke with Pilar the area manager. I may be wrong about who is at fault here but I booked it on this site so this is where I am leaving this review. I have never left a bad review in my life. I am only doing this today because I have been left feeling embarrassed because my guests didn’t have a good time, and because the correspondence with the organisers has been rude and rather mean. I am a 24 year old woman, and I am trying really hard to do well at this job that I love. And this experience has left me incredibly upset. This group with me were from America and had donated a lot of money to a charity we work with and we wanted to treat them to a tour of Scotland. I have attached photos to this review, which are screenshots of some of the conversations with the company. I outline how the experience was in more detail. I scribbled out my personal details and the location of where we were getting picked up just for privacy reasons. Anything is blue is me basically. If you cant, be bothered to read through the email conversations then my summation is below: Basically the bus exploded so our travel was impacted and this had a knock on affect to the rest of the day. We only got to see Stirling castle and were led around it by the castle tour guides, not our own. So there was no private tour of Stirling castle. We paid £1330 for this experience and received only £133 in a refund. Stirling castle tickets are 16.50 per person, so that’s only £165 of the £1330 that I know was spent on something. We paid an upcharge on the restaurant they recommended we go to. The restaurant charged lower prices, so this company made money off of us going there. We didn’t even get everything we paid for as we had to leave. They have claimed that if we got more of a refund “the tour would become free of charge”. We have spent well over a grand on this, I don’t know where any of that money has gone. The company tried to blame myself and my group of 10 witnesses that we were the reason we ran late, and that we couldn’t get to see anything. And blamed me for having to leave to head home around 4:30, but that was when we were scheduled to arrive back and we had evening things booked! I was told “If I am not mistaken you are Scottish, you should know better by 16:30PM every site is closed... I am sure any of the drivers or Sergio didn´t think need advices of this situation”. I am Scottish but I haven’t lived here for 5 years, and I hadn’t actually been to any of the sites we were visiting. This comment made me feel really embarrassed and sad. The company has tried to blame me for the decision around lunch, even though they recommended it to me! And said that we would be fine! I am just tired and sad that this has happened. My reputation as a worker has been diminished as I was the one who was organizing this and I didn’t get us a refund that was fair.