22 Mar 2024
We got picked up for our morning tour of the city, and it was a perfectly fine tour, and part of why I am giving any "stars". We got dropped off at the Skydeck where we were told we would get picked up at 2 for the second half of our tour. We were at the meeting point before 2. An Oceania Tours driver came by, picked up one person, and told us that another bus would be coming for us, that the traffic was really bad so they were all running behind. We waited until 3 before I called to see where our bus might be. We were told that we weren't booked for a tour that day. I said, "that is ridiculous, because your bus dropped me off here 3 hours ago, so I am absolutely on a tour today". The further they looked into it, they realized their "system" hadn't added us to the second half of the tour. They asked if we wanted to get an Uber to the Sanctuary, which we would have likely missed most of, and which was part of what I was looking forward to the most. Or we could re-book the second half the next day, which didn't work because we had a full schedule. Or they offered us a full refund. We took the refund, and it came through pretty quickly, so they did make us whole. However, I really wanted to do the full tour. I was upset that we were forgotten and that we wasted 3 hours, most of which was spent in the heat. This was our 2nd worst tour experience through our entire 3 week trip to New Zealand and Australia.
I hesitated to write this review, but I probably would have still booked this tour, and just asked the first driver to call the company to make sure we were on the second half if I had known that was a regular issue. So, by all means, book this tour, but know that you could run into this issue and just plan ahead and ask if you are definitely listed on the second half of the tour.
It sounded like it had happened to another couple the day before, and the person who handled my phone call said it was a known issue, so the company should really work to get that problem solved, so their customers don't have to do the extra work of verifying what should already be known, especially if they are mid-tour.