TopView Sightseeing Reviews 304

No guide showed up at the walking tour and we didn't get any refound.

So disappointing. Staff on buses were abrupt (borderline rude) and unhelpful. There was no sense of a community experience with tourists on board. The headphones distanced riders from each other and the shared experience of being in NYC. The recorded audio was boring, uninteresting, and uneven. I strongly recommend that NO ONE go in this tour with this company. Not worth it. The folks selling the tour tickets on the ground were far more engaging, helpful, and invested.

Whenever I visit a new city, I usually take a city bus tour. However, my recent experience with Topview in New York City was wholly unsatisfactory. The majority of the staff were impolite and unhelpful when we presented our tickets. Despite our request for a map of the route, they refused to provide one until the bus driver intervened and convinced them otherwise. The tour itself was severely lacking in informative content and instead played an excess of songs about New York rather than educational facts. Although a small number of staff members were helpful, the majority displayed a reprehensible level of rudeness and unhelpfulness. If you want a bus tour of NYC, use another company.

Dirty busses
No airconditioning
Way too many people
Total chaos at river cruise (long waits in full sun on a rundown dirty pier)
Clearly underpaid (motivated) employees

Watch out when you pay cash!!! They are rushing and telling you that the bus will leave now. You pay, and then they tell you that you need to install an app in order to redeem your ticket!!!! This to let you forget that they still need to give you back your change money!!!! I only realised this when I was on the bus!!!! Tour is not worth the money.

Shocking experience!!, brought two day pass for a family of three, very costly, Availability of buses dreadful, shocking customer services, only used bus twice in the end! very scary experience on boat trip included with pass, far to many people on the boat! And no one responds to complaint or emails via their contact address!!!

Bought a 3 day pass.
Redline stopped at nr. 17.
Driver said everybody needs to leave because the bus goes on to another route in 45 min and will not do the loop as on the map.
I told that i am handicapped and cannot walk that far. Driver eas unpolite, not willing to call the manager and ask for a solution. Had no will to help. I needed to pay for a taxi on my own costs.
Totally unprofessional and not willing to help.
Better Big Bus tours next time.

I had to wait over 1 hour at the begining of the tour. A employee offered me to give him 20 $ to skip the line (of about 300 people). I refused this unfair offer.

Only run till 4pm in the summer.
We arrived at a stop at 4 pm with a group of 8z. The bus was at the stop half full. They closed the doors and left us stranded!!! We were furious!!
Never again!

Please dont buy tickets!
They sell way too many tickets from the street salesmen.
All busses are full on top.
Windows are blinded in the bottom.
Tickets are useless.

The WORST experiences in NYC!! Wouldn’t allow me to post with no stars. The sales team is pushy and in your face. The bus broke down twice and did not receive replacement buses. Missed our already paid for tickets at an experience and tried to speak with management to which no one would call. We were dropped off at different ending locations than were on the map and drivers were rude. Tried to ride the boat to the Statue of Liberty and the line extended into another time slot as they could not accommodate reservation time. To which we were then forced on the boat with no seats. Tried to contact the support team and was told we would not receive any refunds. The company does not care about the experiences or how they treat their customers. Watch out how you spend your time. We wasted an excessive amount of time and money and cannot get any of it back, for a trip that was extremely important to our family and the company did not care.

Everything the seller in the street told us was wrong. He sold us 2days pass supposed to start the next day as we requested. But the pass started the same day.
The reservation for Brooklyn is not available in the app. Blurry and high hidden fees when you pay and discover on your credit card bill. +25%.. Don't pay until you see the final amount. The guy took my card and tapped it on his machine without a ticket, you get a code to download the app.
The other reservations are jokes as this is not controlled. You can wait 1h30 before you can get on a bus you reserved. They only focus on selling as much as possible without services and enough buses. No controls, no management of customers. Ask 1 question to different staff, you get as many different answers as people you ask to, all conflicting.

This is a well-organized tourist rip off company like many in NYC, without shame and respect for people/customer.
Avoid those guys, it is faster and cheaper with Metro, public transport as there is 0 added value from those guys. Get less frustration at the end.
They will never refund even if they recognize the issues (Online support..) 460$ wasted, time lost

The TopView night tour did NOT have a working sound system. We could NOT hear the host’ commentary; no entertaining fun facts or history. Bus #353, host Ronny M. It was a total waste of time & money. The host was talking but couldn’t be heard, trying to compete with the NYC traffic noise and the bus size. Our group of 5 will not book TopView again. Also, there was no hop off/on stop in Harlem. Back to Grayline Tours.

This company needs shutting down as with a majority of reviews the word scam comes to mind. Expensive, underhand selling techniques. They do the minimum at a very expensive price, most likely the highest price in world to do a simple hop on hop off bus tour. To fair in New York the other operators will also fleece you too.

AVOID at all costs. We took the 7PM TopView bus on Sunday 5/28/23. There was never a live tour person! There was an imposter who pretended to be the tour guide but she got off the bus right before he took off. There was only the driver, no live tour guide, no audios .
The company is a SCAM . They hire a so called tour guide to say few words before the bus takes off then get on to the next bus and so forth.
Total SCAM

Do not believe the 5 star reviews. They are false. Buses sit and wait till staff harass people on every corner. They make you stand for 2hr for the boat trip. Had I been told that I never would have waited. They sit at Green lights, go through red lights. Believe the guy below me. The 5 stars are fake google people, probably the hundreds he pays to stand on corners harassing you, probably on commission.

Dreadful. Honest review - don't waste your money. Ignore the 5 star reviews - they are clearly falsified. This company does not provide the service you have paid for and everything is not explained regarding reservations etc. Not enough buses run on the tours to support the number of people enlisted. People are turned away for the night tours and only two buses run on the Brooklyn tour at one time of day for the whole day. Also, you can't use these buses as hop-on hop-off services as the buses are always rammed with no spare seating capaity. Don't expect to get back easily after getting off. Quite frankly - rubbish.

Street staff are pushy and very rude. Only interested in taking your money. Taking money and not providing the service is called stealing or daylight robbery.

My suggestion is go elsewhere to a more respectable company for sightseeing.

One of their agents sold me the tickets for two adults and a kid for $193. He said it includes the tickets for the Uptown tour and Madame Tussauds Museum.
After the bus tour, we went to the museum and found out we had been scammed.
I tried to find the agent but couldn't since there were millions of them. I talked to one of the supervisors, and he told me to contact customer care.
I called customer care and sent an email.

Their response is: "When you read our terms and conditions during the checkout process, you agreed to this and chose against asking for a refund. Therefore, we won't be able to give you a refund for your purchase."

Sold us a two pass with the statue boat ride. Got to the boat and they wanted to charge $20.00 per person extra to sit on top. We sat toward bottom front and they allowed people to stand in front of us. Bait and switch is what I would say.

Dishonest ticket sales
Do not run regularly as promised