09 Sep 2022
My wife booked this tour in advance via TripAdvisor. We never been on a Vespa, but wanted the full Italian experience while vacationing in Tuscany. The initial booking page didn’t disclose (and still doesn’t) that experience is mandatory. The only mandatory requirement was a driver’s license, which we both have.
We assumed the tour would provide first timers with a basic lesson based off the reviews on the TripAdvisor page. Long story short, we showed up to our tour and the owner told our guide that there has been too many recent accidents and injuries. He asked if we had any Vespa experience, and we both said no. He allowed me to “test drive” the Vespa in a parking lot and said I was not experienced enough and could not do the tour. “No experience, no ride” was his exact words. I agreed with him entirely and definitely didn’t want to put myself or my wife at risk of injury.
We mutually agreed to cancelled the tour and I requested a refund. They tried to offer us an alternative option within their tour offering, but it wasn’t the experience we were looking for so we declined their offer. He told us to take the refund request up with TripAdvisor and that he wasn’t going to refund us our money because he saved us from hurting ourselves by not doing the tour. We went back in forth, but his logic was ultimately we were in the wrong for booking the tour in the first place.
The owner recently updated his TripAdvisor page, but that doesn’t help us as we had an existing booking that they approved us for. If this was noted upfront, we would’ve never booked this tour in the first place.
We’re currently in conversations with TripAdvisor to get our refund request resolved before we dispute this charge with my credit card company.