I booked my trip to China through Travel Zoo with whom I've loved for years. I booked many trips I've found on that site and they were all great. I would first like to emphasize that Travel Zoo actually has nothing to do with Nexus, only that they find awesome deals and this was no exception. The tour was for about $500. There were a few extra charges for visas and Tipping but even then it was still a great deal.
If you are looking to travel for cheap this is a great tour. They cart you around and you do have very little free time, however for the price it's a little better or a little worse than you'd expect and I have no regrets.
DON'T BUY ANYTHING
They make up for it by taking you on shopping tours. While I didn't mind them and occasionally got decent deals, although some seemed like the tourist traps they were, it wasn't a big deal. Most of the included tours are actually a quick pitch and the selling begins. I did buy at a few places but nothing too crazy.
Then this happened:
https://sharoncai.wordpress.com/tag/tianmai-jewelry/
https://medium.com/indian-thoughts/how-we-got-scammed-out-of-100-000-in-shanghai-fbfbc6954549
https://www.bernardthetraveller.com/china-jade-scam/
http://secretlifeofatravellingpig.blogspot.com/2015/01/shanghai-day-7.html
I found these links after the exact same scenario played out to us. Up until that point I was relatively pleased with my other purchases. They offered us the rubies and jade for $100, no big deal. There were even other people in our group that really encouraged it because they were in the high end jewelry business.
The issue was that our fake CEO, Monica, claimed she needed help with promotion which happens to be my profession. Having an interest in both international business and high end jewelry I gave them my card. Monica pulled me aside and showed me a jewelry set priced at 198,000 Yuan, about $30k USD. I quickly declined but she asked that I only pay the tax at about $1000. They gave us cards, the realest looking certificate of authenticity I'd ever seen, even one of our tour mates overheard them speaking in Mandarin begging the CEO not to sell for that price. She even mentioned a jewelry show that she was to attend in NY, JA NYC which I happened to know was going on in March. The act was insanely real. I did end up buying the jewelry at the last minute because I trusted Nexus' word that they were protecting us from scams and figured I could re-sell it.
I had the hardest time tracking them down to connect for this marketing proposition. The entire trip Nexus encouraged us by saying all the places they took us are safe to buy and that they protect us from scams. After days of Google I finally found the above articles.
Most of the products you buy on the other trips seem to be overpriced by those of us who do not know better but the product is at least real. I took this set to the jeweler and it is 100% fake, although at first sight it really looked genuine, down to the stamps and certificates.
I have some serious action planned to deal with this scam but I am counting on Nexus to do the right thing and get my money back.
In summary, go on the tour. For the price, if you're a budget by-any-means-necessary traveler, this is still a great trip, but don't buy a damn thing. read more