While these places are all incredible and well worth a visit, I will probably never book with…read moreAnderson Tours again. Our guide was awful. As we passed through an area known as the "Garden of England" she remarked that "It all just looks gray, and this may be hard to believe but, yes, some people think this is actually a garden". At the castle stop, she told us all that we could use the restroom if we needed before going on the tour of the tunnels, but because our group was large, we created a bit of a line. I was near the end of the group and when I got to the tunnel door, she told me that I couldn't go into the tunnels because I was late. The castle guide working the tunnel tour then told me I could go in. I mentioned that there were still people in the bathroom who wanted to go on the tour and our guide told me that they would not be able to because they were late- even though she was the one who told us to use the restroom first. Three hours at the castle was a bit long for me so I got back on the bus a little early and found our guide who told me she was "trying to sleep". Two women were late coming back from the castle and she left them there. When someone on the bus asked if they were okay, she told us a long story over the PA about another time some tourists were late and painted them in a very unflattering light. Because the two women that she left were late, we only had 1/2 hour at the cliffs, which was just enough time to walk from the bus to the trailhead and back. I signed up for this tour because I wanted to see the cliffs and did not have enough time to walk the trail at all. We then went back to pick up the women that our guide had left at the castle. They were literally standing by the side of the road. When we got to Canterbury, she said "Some of you signed up for the Cathedral tour. You know who you are" but when we told her that none of us knew if we had signed up or not, she looked put out that she had go through her list to tell us. To add insult to injury, she told the two women that she had left at the castle that they had not signed up for the Cathedral visit. When they insisted that they had paid for one, she told them that it was no problem, they could just purchase another ticket at the door. We only saw our guide between stops- Once we got to a stop and she walked us to the location, she disappeared each time. Then, on the way home, she announced that she was going to walk the rows of the bus "to get to know us better" in what really felt like a gratuitous move to get tips, which she did ask for at the end. Since there was no designated time to eat during the whole day, I grabbed a sandwich in Canterbury and threw it in my backpack, thinking I could eat it on the way back. When I asked the guide if it was okay to eat on the bus, she said "A small snack is okay, but sometimes people try to eat things like hamburgers and it is so awful. They smell up the whole bus. It's awful", so I didn't dare take it out of my bag. When I got back, I ate my sandwich at home at 8:00 and looked online to see how to go back to see the cliffs on my own using trains and an Uber. I really want to go see them, but not with Anderson tours.
To add insult to injury, when I contacted the company to let them know about all of this and to ask if it could be somehow resolved, they told me that my dissatisfaction was due was a "culture clash" and chalked it up to stress over a personal issue that I am dealing with at the moment. I am appalled at the lack of professionalism and total disregard for my feedback.
