Last March, after much research and thought, I booked a walking tour of Alsace through Sentiers de France. They were very quick to answer my questions and I gave them a 25% deposit. I was supposed to pay the remainder one month before the trip and then they would send me the information one week before departure.
As the trip approached, I realized that my vacation planning would already put me in Europe one week before the Alsace trip. I attempted to contact by email (the method we had used previously) two members of the sales team who I had dealt with previously. I explained my situation in the email and requested help in obtaining the travel information and help in the process of paying the remainder of the money due. I received no responses. Finally, about a week from my departure I sent a fax to the number on my sales contract expressing my concern and my need to speak with someone from their office. My fax machine indicated that the fax had gone through. I received no response before I left on my vacation.
A week before the departure date for the walking tour I received an email with a very scrambled subject line and written in very poor English. Of course, I was already in Europe without email access and did not open this mail until the tour date was past. To their credit, there was also a phone call on my answering machine when I returned. They are of course claiming my entire deposit and not answering my current emails to them even though I have sent them copies of every communication I have had with them.
Despite having a very nice English website, clearly their command of English is problematic. They appear to have a process but if anything out of the ordinary happens they can not and will not respond or make changes. My recommendation is to avoid them.
I almost booked a replacement trip on the fly before I departed with Discover France and the sales person I communicated with was very helpful and nice, with a great command of English. They were quite prepared to help me at the last minute to arrange a similar walking tour. I ended up booking an apartment at the winery Domaine Sipp - Mack in the delightfully ancient, picturesque, and tiny village of Hunawihr - smack between and equidistant to the villages of Riquewhir and Ribeauville.
I used this as my touring headquarters. The winery has a half dozen or so apartments that are generally rented by Danes. The Sipp-Macks (and the Danes) speak English quite well. There are two very good restaurants in the village and one so-so Italian one on the outskirts of town. The stork reserve is also on the outskirts and storks can now be seen often in town. With the train and bus schedules, and topographic maps in hand, I was able to do all the walking I wanted from this location. It wasn%26#39;t quite as nice as having my breakfast made for me everyday and a day%26#39;s itinerary put in my hand as I went out the door - but it worked.
|||
This is very disappointing to read b/c in the spring of 2007, after much research, I booked a customized (a la carte)walking tour with Sentiers de France. My experience was just the opposite of yours! Everything worked as it should ... hoteliers knew we were coming, taxis arrived at specified times, etc. My husband and I were so pleased that we immediately began planning our next tour and intend to use Sentiers de France.
An important story, on our arrival in LePuy, the hotel was expecting us but there was no dossier awaiting our arrival. Immediately my husband called the %26quot;emergency%26quot; number, an easily understood English speaker answered the phone, understood our concern and said he would call us back within 30 minutes. Five minutes after the phone call the front desk clerk was at our door. There had been some confusion in their office and here was our dossier. The clerk no more finished his apologies and the phone rang, it was Sentiers%26#39; representative calling to assure us that a) the dossier was in the hotel and b)it should immedately arrive at our door.
I know the company was moving their office from Paris to Foutainbleu in 2008. I wonder if your disasterous experience was (unexcusably) a result of mmoving records, setting up a new office and computers ?
|||
-:- Message from TripAdvisor staff -:-
This topic was inactive for 6 months and has been closed to new posts. We hope you'll join the conversation by posting to an open topic or starting a new one.
To review the TripAdvisor Forums Posting Guidelines, please follow this link: http://www.tripadvisor.com/pages/forums_posting_guidelines.html
We remove posts that do not follow our posting guidelines, and we reserve the right to remove any post for any reason.
Removed on: 9:18 pm, August 11, 2009
No comments:
Post a Comment