Hi,
I was searching online a tour operator for Dubai Trip. I gathered few quotes and initially felt Pick Your Trail (PYT) quote a bit expensive but it was very elaborated information with inclusions and exclusions and initially the booking agent(Pulkit) was very responsive and said he is available 24/7. Their response was awesome till the time we did the payment. The problem started once the 2/3 of booking amount was paid. They were just in hurry to receive payment instead of giving services.
Here is the list of issues that we faced:
1. The agent changed the timing for one of the sightseeing and went ahead and booked the tickets for the same giving excuse that all the bookings for morning slot were full. He didn’t even took our approval before making the change in the plan. We had already informed him that we need time for shopping and due to this change we won’t get time to do our planned activity. We had to escalate the matter to his manager Sourav in order to bring back the sightseeing to the original planned schedule.
2. We were informed that 1 day before the trip starts we will receive the airport transfer information and there will be WhatsApp group created for easy communication. However, nothing was done till midnight of previous day. We had to follow-up with the POC and the excuse we got from him is that he is in Goa and can’t help us. We had to escalate the matter again to Saurav and reach out to live support ID to get the driver information. The support ID then informed us that there will be no WhatsApp group created and all communication will happen on the live support ID. We were three people but the inform access was available only to me and not to other 2 passengers travelling with me.
3. He informed us that the junior suite was 500+ Sq feet and had 1 bedroom with 2 queen size bed and 1 living room. However, when we checked in we were shocked to find out that the hotel had just bedroom with 2 queen size bed and it didn’t had any living room. The room size was just 300+ sq feet. When he shared the hotel name, I even queried him stating that online it shows the room size to be just 300+ sq feet to which he said “Mam I assure you it’s 500+ sq feet since it has one living room and one bedroom. The information online is incorrect.”
4. We had opted for private transfers. At times when we were ready and waiting in lobby the cab never came on time and arrived 20-30 minutes later and when we were late the cab came before time and the driver and the PYT team kept following up with us informing about the cab waiting for us.
In one instance we were out for shopping and had informed PYT and the driver that we are running late and requested to reschedule the timing since it was pvt transfer to which they denied saying the changes cant be made. Further, the driver assigned that day came 30 minutes earlier than our scheduled pick-up time and kept calling and harassing us to be ready for pick-up on time. We even informed the driver in person that we will be ready in few minutes for pick-up. He called us again from hotel lobby and we went down within 5 minutes post call from reception and to our surprise the driver left without picking us up and left a slip of “NO Show” in spite of we constantly being in touch with him. When we spoke to PYT support team initially they said it was our mistake and were asking us to bear the cost for transfer to the sightseeing point. However later when I mentioned I want to escalate to the CEO only then their senior came on call and agreed to reimburse the cab cost for visiting the sightseeing point.
There was another instance when while returning from desert safari our cab broke down and we ended up waiting in the isolated desert almost 45 minutes to get a replacement cab to drop us back. We had plans post safari which got delayed due to car break down.
In short, all travel issues on PYT are justified but if client request for changes in pickup or drop even once that is not taken into consideration.
5. The TCS for one of my friend was issued incorrectly in her father’s name instead of her name and even after following up 5-6 times they have still not rectified it and have been just dragging the matter stating they will.
6. The itinerary voucher shared post payment had too many errors and didn’t sync with the original itinerary shared with us. We had to flag it to POC to fix it. For Dubai Frame Tickets, Global Village Tickets were updated in their voucher section. The day we had to go for sightseeing, we had to reach out to live support to provide us the correct tickets for Dubai Frame.
Overall I would say following is the summary of our issues:
1. Poor planning by PYT when it comes to create a time saving schedule.
2. False information shared by the booking POC(Pulkit)
3. Very unprofessional when it comes to giving service and making amendments to pick up and drop timings even though it was pvt transfers.
4. Too many errors in the itinerary plan and tickets that were shared with us vs the original itinerary shared with us before making the payments.
1) Pricing: 1/5 star – Very expensive for the kind of services provided.
2) Sales team: 1/5 star - Sales person will commit whatever you will ask for and once the booking is done, they will say please reach out to support team.
3) Support when you are in other country: 1/5 star - Every message I sent via Application were replied by some other sales agent.
4) Overseas travelling partner: 1/5 star