A group of 7 women and I booked a half-day excursion day with this company, but at the very beginning of our excursion, a female in our group noticed a staff member's arm hanging over the top of the bathroom stall holding his blue cell phone to record photos/videos of her using the restroom.
She then ran out of her stall to try to get him to unlock his stall and show her his phone's photos so she could see that the images were deleted. For a couple of minutes the offending young male would not come out of his stall, and when he finally emerged to meet other staff members and our victimized female along with our alarmed group, the offending male lied and said he had no phone. After many minutes of the group arguing, his phone surfaced, and again we were fed lies about how this all didn't happen. We dug through his phone, but the pictures had already been deleted. Unfortunately, two other female members of our group had used the same bathroom stall only seconds before our female group member who had caught the offender, so the other two members of our group (myself included) were VERY likely victim to the same offense but they just didn't happen to look up to see the man's phone filming them.
Eventually the company's staff isolated the victimized member of our group to talk to her about what had happened and, after a long conversation, the company agreed that to make up for it: they would cover our whole group's participation fee for the day and give our group free photos after the excursion. Had the company not promised that, our group would have left immediately. Instead, we went on with the day.
However, when our group finished the excursion and when we talked with supervisor Pablo to get in writing the initial communication about receiving the day for free, he said the company was only covering our single victimized member's participation fee, and that if we wanted to have the rest of our group covered, we would need to go off-site and take it up with the Mexican police. We asked why his promise had changed, but he insisted that the company had only promised that one of us would participate for free as a result of this offense. Perhaps there was a communication misunderstanding in the initial conversation between parties, but honestly I can't see why a company wouldn't compensate an entire party when something this awful happens to its members. We had at least three females being taken advantage of and it was a sex crime: photos taken of us with our pants down and without our consent. Why would a company's leadership not be grateful that we weren't pressing charges against them, and give us what we felt was fair given the level of the offense? There was no evidence we could have given the Mexican police anyway because we insisted that the offending staff member delete the photos. Why would the supervisor believe one of our group member's word about what happened, but refuse to listen to anyone else in our group about how we also had gone into the same stall to likely have our privacy violated?
This is a piss poor example of the leader of a company not taking ownership of injustice his employee caused. Deferring to another authority in response, the leader instead assumed that he can put a price on our non-consenting naked bodies? That is complete bullshit. Fuck that leader's decision and what it represents. This company de-prioritizes customer service and justice in response to its staff member's predatory actions, period. I'm not sure what value they were prioritizing instead, was it profit or covering their costs?
I don't understand the supervisor's logic to his values system because it sounds ineffective to lose customers due to a harmful occurrence not to being set right. That will decrease the company's profit in the long run. In response, we told the supervisor - okay so what you're saying is that if you're not going to compensate us properly to make up for this injustice, you're okay with us writing an honest review about the offense that just happened?? He said yes. So here is that review. Other friends in my group have posted this story, too, but I hear the travel company is finding ways to take our posts down.
The upside here: this company's RTV, zip line, and cave swimming experience was really lovely and Jose was a fabulous tour guide.
But if you hire this company, be careful of when you are changing your clothes or using the restroom while you are on property because there may be sexual predators on staff. And if they capture you naked on film without your consent, don't expect their company's leadership to take ownership of the situation and set it right. I sincerely hope this does not happen to others in the future. read more