The fact that I’m even giving feedback three times is a testament to EF’s poor customer service. Pretending that your company cares, but not actually acting on the feedback you’re given is meaningless. This is the second time my son was on EF tour and it was a completely different experience from the excellent experience he had the first time. The flights were the first thing that I have negative feedback regarding. We were flown in late afternoon, rendering our first day almost meaningless. We were taxi through Paris to look at things, but not actually enter them and then taken into a semi touristy restaurant to eat a subpar meal. The flight out was so early in the morning that we actually had to stay up all night so that we wouldn’t miss waking up at 2 AM to leave. This was only made worse by seeing two of the other groups flown in much earlier in the day so that they had more time in Paris and one of the groups flown out five hours later than us so that they got a good nights sleep. The biggest complaint that I have is the lack of organization and the misrepresentation of the Tours. When I showed people the itinerary we all believed that we would be actually experiencing the interior of these places like the iconic Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, etc. But when we arrived that we were being rushed through all these places with no time to enter them nor the tickets to enter them! I didn’t discover this until after our first day there where I was told we had no tickets to enter anything and that if I wanted to do that, we would have to do it in our free time and plan accordingly. So I spoke to the tour guide and to our group leader, letting them know that we wanted to go into the Eiffel Tower, even though we weren’t able to secure tickets because you can’t do that at the last minute, we were going to take our chances with the walking line. This fell in line with our original itinerary, which ended our morning tour at the Eiffel Tower for free time. I was shocked when we were taken to a mall in Paris and told that we could figure out what we wanted to do in our free time even though most of our group wanted to go up the Eiffel Tower. We were nowhere near the Eiffel Tower would’ve had to take the metro that we’ve never navigated on our own in a foreign country. Three hours of free time would not have been enough time for us to wait for the train get on the train, Take it across town and then try to get in the walking line which could be 30 minutes to an hour before you even start your ascent. So instead, we walked around in overcrowded shopping area of town where we had no idea where anything was and a mall. It was literally the worst part of the entire tour. What they call day two on our tour is what I call our first full day and it was a complete waste of time. We should have instead had a very organized tour with excursion options if EF was not going to buy tickets included in our tour. That should’ve been very upfront. I looked at an itinerary from another Tours company for reference. This other company indicates where exactly you will be each day with suggestions for what to do in that city along with options for excursions and in those excursion options it lists very explicitly what is included and what isn’t included like tickets to something within the city walls, etc., that you may want to plan months in advance for. I don’t know why Ef Tours chose to conceal that from us, but it feels very dishonest. One of the only two excursions that was offered was the palace of Versailles, which, for whatever reason we did not go to an I still have not received the refund for we also didn’t get to tour the amphitheater in Nîmes but have not received any kind of refund for that either even though I was assured that my refund would be processed. From that first full day on, we really had to be actively involved in creating our own positive experience in France on this tour by finding tickets to things that we wanted to enter and making our own schedule ahead of time. Having your itinerary at least two months in advance with explicit notes about what your tourists are going to be able to enter and what they’ll need tickets for and where exactly they’ll be spending their free time so that they can plan this appropriately is needed. The food and lodging was so subpar. The three hotels that were chosen were all 45 minutes to an hour by bus outside of the cities that we were touring. Because of this, we spent almost 2 hours a day just commuting to and from our hotel room rather than being in the city where we could stay later and experience more and have more time. The hotels themselves were economical. The restaurants chosen for our dinners were almost all subpar. The food at places we chose on our own in the cities was exceptional in comparison. Transparency, communication, organization, expertise, and finesse were all needed and lacking.
