Travel Complaint

Hello,

My friend and I recently used Chinatravelz travel agency (www.chinatravelz.com) to organize the tour along the Silk Road and around Chengdu area. China is an amazing country and we enjoyed the different sites, sceneries and ethnicities.

However, we would have enjoyed it a lot more if the tour operator would have stuck to the agreed schedule and payment inclusions. Fighting for it during the tour really spoilt the experience a lot.

The travel tour operator Mr. Miao Yue has ‘helped’ organizing the trip and we would like to list here the items which did not take place as initially agreed on:
1. Turpan: Grape Valley visit was taken from schedule
2. Dunhuang: Camel ride was taken from schedule
3. Stay at a 3* hotel in Jiayuguan (instead of 4*!)
4. Lanzhou city sites have been taken from schedule
5. First 2* then upgrade to 3* hotel in Lanzhou (instead of 4*)
6. Binglin Si has been taken from schedule
7. Maji Shan has been taken from schedule
8. Instead of 4.& 5. we head ‘leisure day and shopping in Xining’
9. Bingling Si takes place after long and extremely annoying discussions with Miao Yue, however, the boat trip, which we already paid for, had to be paid again by us
10. Xining: tour guide refuses to pay for lunch and dinner (which we also already have paid for!)
11. Chengdu: car is very old and not safe. e.g. there where no safety belts or head rests. Also the windscreen wipers, back mirror, speedometer, and AC did not work! According to our measurements, the maximum speed was 100 km/h!
12. The tour guide (who happened to be Mr Miao Yue) visited the sites for the first time and could not answer one single question nor give us any kind of information we were interested.
13. Request for new car and new tour guide has been ignored by the travel agency
14. Mt Emei: the guide suggested a 6 hour hike along the foot of the mountain which would have cost the travel agency nothing, but would have left out all the star sights. We had to organize trip by themselves in the end in order to see the summit and the interesting sites.

We want here to specially complain about Mr Miao Yue who insulted us several times and whose attitude towards us was below any decency.

- first day: arrives 20 minutes late to pick us up, doesn’t give excuses nor would call us to inform us about the delay
- visited the panda breading centre for the first time, could not give answer to any questions, but promised to look it up and answer later on. This never happened
- can’t answer any question to Daoism at the site we visited (also his first time…)
- big Buddha: Miao Yue doesn’t even know the size of the Buddha, guesses 80 meters (indicated on big plate next to Buddha is 71m!)
- insults us in stating that since we aren’t Buddhists we wouldn’t understand it. Hence he doesn’t explain or tell us anything about it
- Maio Yue, as tour guide, walks behind us tourists and takes pictures for himself. He even stands on the best spot of the platform taking pictures of the big Buddha, while we had to wait for him to move before being able to take our pictures!
- Confronted with his missing knowledge on the tourist sites Miao Yue states: ‘I’m not a local tour guide’
? this is what we paid for, though!
- Lunch was said that day to be quick and light. We finished and then waited for Miao Yue to finish. After 10 min we asked him to leave, he insulted us by stating that we have to wait since he’s still eating!
- He insults us not being able to use chop sticks, which we’re actually pretty used using, after having lived in Asia for over 2 years!
- Mt Emei: Miao Yue had a very rough map of the area through which he wanted to lead us, leaving out the 3 main sights which would have included the summit and the central area.
- Morning of Mt Emei: we pass the hotel key to Mr Miao Yue in the key envelope early morning so he can check out for us. Later that day he insists we didn’t pass him the key and called us liars when we said we did so.
- Last but not least Mr Miao Yue didn’t hand us over the evaluation form, guessing it wouldn’t be a positive outcome.
- Every time Mr Miao Yue the agreement we had to lead long and annoying discussions to get what we agreed on. However, up to date we still haven’t received all the money we had to pay ourselves for lunch and dinner.

We have paid a big sum for this tour. Considering all the trouble we had with the travel agency, there is no way we would plan the Silk Road and Chengdu visits through Chinatravelz again. This company still owes us money from overpaying for food and accommodation. This is without taking into account the 5 days we paid for a tour guide and didn’t get anyone.

with best regards
sandra and maria