03 Sep 2018
Well in advance of the appointed tour start time, my father and I were at what Apple Maps said was the museum entrance (at the guarded gate, facing Hôtel des Invalides, across Avenue de Tourville from Place Vauban). Our guide never showed up there.
This was because the specified tour start location is “Place des Invalides (main entrance to the museum) Rue de Grenelle”, which is on the opposite side of the museum complex.
Our second mistake was that when I booked the tour I supplied my own cell phone number, and it turned out my employer, who owns my cell phone, forbid me to take it overseas. We used my father’s cell phone instead, but I did not think to update our registration for this tour. The tour company left a message on my cell phone that I was not able to listen to until I got back home from the trip.
HOWEVER:
(1) We called the contact number on our tour voucher several times after the tour start time, and it went straight to voice mail, we left messages each time, never got any response. If the tour guide (or someone able to put us in contact with the tour guide) had answered or returned our calls, we could have cleared up the misunderstanding and taken the tour.
(2) Viator’s response to my refund request was “Upon review of your request, ARTSTUR Ltd, have advised that since you did not confirm with the supplier at least 24 hours in advance a refund cannot be provided, additionally the guide waited for over an hour at the correct meeting point before leaving. As we are being billed in full for this booking, we are unable to provide a refund or credit on this occasion.” This response is irrelevant. How could we possibly apply for a refund a day in advance of the guide’s no-show?
We are out over $500 for the missed tour (which we just did on our own after getting no response to our repeated calls). Don’t make the same mistakes we did, the main one of which, in my opinion, was booking a three-levels-deep tour: TripAdvisor to Viator to Artstur - too many paths for communication to break down).