seasicklover

I also had a dreadful experience. He assured us of a great tour and we had a girl who was a very poor guide and ruined a trip for us. It was so bad we made up stories of monuments etc we passed to liven our tour up. Very poor and he refused a refund. The place we ate was very poor also.

Yesterday Sunday May 18 I mailed Zoom but did not get his reply till end of the day. Visiting his Facebook I saw so many clips about people's demonstration in the street voicing support for national sovereignty in a conflict with a neighboring country. Later in the day Zoom confirmed my thoughts by saying he was on Facebook fighting in citizen's duty for national unity thru pictures, clips, texts...highlighting nation's appeals.

Asked about your case he said he was so sorry for using not good guides and that he has changed, never use affiliate guides again. He also said he never refused to make refund.

I suppose a man voluntarily fighting for his country from his position is a good man. Misunderstanding could be the reason. You should mail him again for refund.

I think Zoom likes to take the largest tour, if there are multiples on that day. We booked with him first (as far as I know) on our ship, and had 15 people, then I passed on his name to someone else on the cruise, but she only wanted 8 in her group. When we arrived in HCMC, we saw her group at the Chinese temple - Zoom was leading, but I counted 21 people with him, so he had put a number of groups together, and taken them himself. For our group of 15, we only paid $58 each, and that included coffee at the Rex Hotel and lunch at Pho 2000. Maybe the other groups, being smaller, had paid more per person! Oh, well, we'll know better next time...

 

I meant to say, we had good luck with Smile Tours (Mrs. Thi) in Halong Bay and Danang. Excellent tours and guides.

I have a different story with Zoom.

I contacted Zoom for a city your in HCM from the Celebrity next March. Our group is 4 people. He advised us to group 10 or 15 or agree to join into 10 or 15 pax group and he will be our guide instead of using affiliate guides. The prices he sent for 10 and 15-pax group are much lower, $58 and $49 per person. I think he avoids using affiliates by asking people to join or make a bigger group of 10 or 15. And he will go with our 4-pax group if by next March there are no more participants.