Would like to post a review about their services, hoping to be of some help to the ’AAM AADMI’ in making a more informed decision.
They are extremely professional while they are still selling to you, but totally unprofessional & are least concerned about customer’s problems after they have closed the deal & received the full payment. Even complaining to senior managers is of no use. I booked a customized package costing 1.5Lac for Kerala and paid them a premium of atleat 30-40K over their other competitors just because I placed my trust on their promises of ensuring a ZERO hassle tour with even better rooms & hotels than I had selected & preferred myself. So I let it go & did not negotiate the price & paid that premium. Instead of caring for a premium paying customer - I got totally screwed up, completely, thoroughly ruined my Honeymoon experience - the once in a life-time event.
In planning the tour I did the entire research of places to visit, planning the no. of stays at each stop, researched Hotels & even the rooms and also the local sightseeing. I did all this over a period of 10-15 days & asked them to only handle bookings & confirm the itinerary. Of the 7 locations I chose, they simply removed one important & v v scenic location without consulting & added a stop which was a crowded city with absolutely nothing to see - were supposed to pay only to sit a room in for the entire day. When I cancelled the one night stay at that city, I was blamed for not doing it any earlier and was also blamed for causing ’them’ some loss - as if it is the customer who owes them their life ... (Haa Haa .. what a team of so called professionals) .
Any ways, of remaining 6-locations we did not get our preferred room at 05 locations. Imagine my plight when I did all the diligent research & spent 1.5 lacs but I get sub-standard (sometimes poor & stinking bad) services - they ruined my Honeymoon entirely ... a once in a life time event - totally messed up. To add to all this, When we delayed payment of last 10% of total package cost because we were not getting the quality services, their staff threatens us to stop their services & were willing to let me & wife stuck in Kerala without any flight or reservations or taxi if we did not pay the balance 10% immediately - they were least concerned that I had to travel 22 KMs just to deposit the payment. Any-ways, I did that - the threat was very unnerving & had to submit to their will. Not just the rooms, they even did not help with non-courteous hotel staff whenever we raised the issue. Since we were always given the sub-standard rooms, we asked for the up-gradation which was initially the design of the package - we were plainly denied & their staff had the nerve to shout back at us for requesting to accommodate the up-gradation charges at each location.
The house boat was another fraud - Did not get even 10% of value for the money I paid for booking a premium House boat. IT was a shady, old, unhygienic, poorly maintained houseboat. Had to ask the staff-on-boat several times to come in our room to kill insects & cockroaches. The toilet was so dirty, that I would have preferred to use the fields, if there were any. The water in the bathroom was dirty & was either grey or brownish in color. on the day of check-out we had no option but to demand from the boat house that the water be boiled for our bathing - which they immediately did. If it was not for the staff-on-boat - I would have been driven to the point to jump off the shitty boat & swim to the grounds. Really bad & pathetic experience on the boat & imagine this happening on our honeymoon. Also, the 2-day route which was confirmed to us was never even communicated to the boat owner. When we demanded the better quality boat, they just asked us to speak & deal with the boat owner directly & exhibited inability to be able to help us. We were denied a boat with upper deck saying that it is banned but we we saw every 2nd boat with people on upper deck. When we told the owner this, he had smartly set us in motion by then & claimed that other are breaking the law but he cannot. looks like that entire allepey boat owner are law breakers & he is the only one who was law abiding. The tour operator did not even help us in insisting on the quality of boat we paid for, rather they joined the owner in trying convince us on their stupid reasons.
Overall, I am so disgusted & DISAPPOINTED with them (even after spending good amount of money) that I have decided to never use a tour operator EVER - Even if I do have to consider any other tour operator, I am not even speaking with OR looking at these guys again, EVEN IF SOMEONE FORCES ME TO EVEN CONSIDER THEM FOR A MOMENT ON GUN POINT.
U remember UR honeymoon UR entire life - Imagine the disgust, disappointment, helplessness, sorry feeling we will FEEL whenever we look back at hour honeymoon days in the years to come. :(