18 Aug 2022
We booked to go quad biking, zip lining and on a mule ride while on holiday in Mexico through Viator. The Viator directions sent us to an office, called Canopy River, to be picked up by coach. We got there and they didn’t have a booking for us, we showed the reference and the name of their company was there on the website, so they rang their boss and found out it wasn’t booked through their company it was actually a completely different company, Go Pralia, that was not stated on the Viator website, and we had no directions provided of how to get there. Eventually, the people from the Canopy River office kindly directed us to the right place. This wasted 30 minutes of our time and a $20 taxi to the wrong place because of the wrong address and company being displayed on the Viator website.
We finally got to the right office, and they did have our booking, so we got on an extremely hot coach in 33 degree Mexican heat for over an hour, which took us to the check in desk at the start point for the trip, where they asked us to pay a $50 per person deposit. On the Viator website it clearly states that a only a $10 per person deposit is required to be paid at the start of the trip (I have screenshots of this). As it states this we didn’t take enough money for the $50 deposit and were refused on the trip. The people at the desk told us the trip would be cancelled, however, I would have to get a refund through Viator as there was nothing they personally could do, and we crossed our names off the consent forms that they had asked us to sign, (I can provide proof of this as I took a picture in case I ran into any problems like this, and the company, Go Pralia, would not have any forms with our names on as they would not let us on the trip). I have since contacted Go Pralia and they can confirm that we did not take part in the activity due to Viator miss-representing their trip and them requiring a larger deposit than we had been instructed by Viator to bring.
We were also told whilst we were there that Go Pralia didn’t even provide mule rides which it clearly states on the Viator website we were paying for. This was completely false advertising from Viator, as this was part of the reason we wanted to do this trip. We then had to pay for a $30 taxi home and lost an entire day of our holiday as we were refused the service we had paid for.
Upon going to my bookings on Viator, the trip says “cancelled, refund request escalated to customer service”, however, when I have contacted customer service via email, they do not even reply, I have tried ringing and the people on the phone at Viator are not allowed to discuss refunds with customers
I was completely scammed and paid for something that was miss-sold to me, and I was not allowed to participate in due to the company cancelling the service at the very last moment as Viator had misled us.
Viator will not refund me and are lying to PayPal when I try to open a dispute.
DO NOT BOOK THIS TRIP, you will be falsely sold something and cannot get your money back.