I was a part of Lindsey C and Michael G's group. The main place this company fell short here for us was communication and taking advantage of our group when we were already on the tour. If you do plan on doing business with them get every single detail on paper and verbally communicated to you because they will nickel and dime you with their own mocked up records.
The company's response on Lindsey's post seems intricately detailed, in attempt to save face and show receipt of how "terrible" we were for asking the day before if our other friend could potentially come and a tour go-er grabbing coffee around when we were leaving. I have a timestamped text from when we left the city, 9:47am. We ~were 15 minutes late, not 10:04 like they stated. If you plan on getting coffee or having friends, this company will call you "the worst trip ever".
I understand there was a miscommunication with adding the 9th person (which was a potential inquiry about last minute and not involved in the initial contract for 8), however we thought nothing of it because the first winery we went to only had 8 settings.
READER BEWARE: THEIR DISINGENUOUS CONTRACT ALLOWS THEM TO ADD PEOPLE TO THE RESERVATION BUT NOT CANCEL/DEDUCT WITHOUT RE-ISSUING A NEW CONTRACT.
Do you win the argument on a technicality? Sure. Is it an honest business policy that I personally would adopt? Absolutely not. After we paid for what we thought was the full amount in cash, our driver came up to us with a random other limo driver (presumably worked for the same company unbeknownst to us) and asked us where the fare for the 9th person was. Personally, it seems shady to not ask that when we were leaving NYC, but only ask that when you know we are 8 deep in the Hamptons. We did not know what he was talking about so we called the company. The "miraculous" part as the company mentioned in their response about having the money show up was because the driver said he was GOING TO LEAVE US AT THE FIRST WINERY WITH NO RIDE BACK INTO NYC if we did not pay for the non-present 9th person and proceeded to say it was "just business". If that is "just business" then we will just take our business elsewhere.
We did not have the cash handy for the 9th person although we did agree to pay any costs we incurred, which the company left out of their thoughtfully "detailed" response. We did get frustrated when they refused to let us charge the rest on the card they had on file to just get it over with and not let this ruin our day, they said "no, we are leaving without you if you do not have cash in hand". Congratulations, you shook us down. You successfully left out your stranding and mafia tactics in your "miraculous" description of how you got cash from us when we already agreed to pay you.
Steve, our driver, at the last winery said we could stay an extra half hour and he wouldn't charge us because he didn't want to put a damper on our day. We found this nice and took him up on that, however, did not expect it to be held against us like this otherwise we would not have done it. We have a time stamped text to Steve at 4:47 that we were ready to go and heading over to him in the front.
I'm done talking to/at the company. All they care about is the fine print and technicalities they can catch you on and we wish we had the five star experience that other people had. We're not bad people looking to soil their name, we genuinely wanted to have a good time but when you treat people like it's "just business", then we will too. Wine tours are fun, so if you're going to go on one with this company, get all the details rock solid, ironed out and communicated. If not, the person in your group who booked your trip will be attacked non-stop all day by this company arguing and haggling, instead of letting us enjoy our trip and figuring everything out after. You had our credit card on file, if we were so terrible, just charge the card and be done with it, is that not what you take collateral for?
Oh, also, make sure you don't throw your garbage out. Yes, you heard me correctly. THEY WERE MAD THAT WE THREW OUR GARBAGE OUT at the second winery and didn't re-bag everything to bring back with us. This wasn't communicated to us but somehow we were supposed to just know, along with all the other fine print on the trip. read more