Hello Ephesus Tour Company

[celyvabeach]

I'm confused. Were you on a private tour or one organized by the ship?

 

 

I'm confused too! Why would RCL have anything to do with a private tour? We are booked with Hello Ephesus in Nov and told them not to take us to any carpet demonstration...

[jesse]

We booked Hello Ephesus privately, not through the ship. On the television on RCCL the shopping guru-forget her name, told the entire ship, including those people who physically sat through the information session, that we'd be forced to go through the carpet demos no matter what tours we had booked. And she was right. I specifically asked NOT to go to the carpet demo, both in my prior emails to Hello Ephesus and then we reiterated that when we met Bill from hello ephesus. What none of us understood is that the "free lunch" included with the day of touring with Hello Ephesus is AT the rug demo. You have absolutely no choice in the matter. Even after arguing with Bill about it, as I have already stated, we went directly to the rug demo-lunch is in their back yard.

Frankly, the art of crafting the rugs is wonderful. However, when we are paying, we expect not to be bullied into doing what we don't wish to do. If Bill had even told me that the 'free lunch' had a demo attached to it, we could have discussed it. As it was, I felt that we had to keep our mouths shut in order to continue the tour and get our ride back to the ship. When you direct a tour guide that you are paying, NOT to do something, you can imagine how it feels when you are brought exactly where you don't want to be, and he just sat there with his arms crossed. As I said, we've never had a problem with tours-NEVER. until bill........

[wantocruisemore]

We booked Hello Ephesus privately, not through the ship. On the television on RCCL the shopping guru-forget her name, told the entire ship, including those people who physically sat through the information session, that we'd be forced to go through the carpet demos no matter what tours we had booked. And she was right. I specifically asked NOT to go to the carpet demo, both in my prior emails to Hello Ephesus and then we reiterated that when we met Bill from hello ephesus. What none of us understood is that the "free lunch" included with the day of touring with Hello Ephesus is AT the rug demo. You have absolutely no choice in the matter. Even after arguing with Bill about it, as I have already stated, we went directly to the rug demo-lunch is in their back yard.

Frankly, the art of crafting the rugs is wonderful. However, when we are paying, we expect not to be bullied into doing what we don't wish to do. If Bill had even told me that the 'free lunch' had a demo attached to it, we could have discussed it. As it was, I felt that we had to keep our mouths shut in order to continue the tour and get our ride back to the ship. When you direct a tour guide that you are paying, NOT to do something, you can imagine how it feels when you are brought exactly where you don't want to be, and he just sat there with his arms crossed. As I said, we've never had a problem with tours-NEVER. until bill........

 

I never went to any of the port talks on our ship the Navigator last week but I can attest from personal experience that NOT all private tours go to a carpet factory. We booked through Kosagen Tours and had Yelda as our guide for our group of 9. At the very start we went through the itinerary. I had expressed earlier in emails with Kosagen that we did not want a carpet demo. It did not come up at all on our tour. The only real discussion in the group was one person sort-of wanted to see the House of Mary but was outvoted.

Actually, the experience you had was the reason we went with Kosagen Tours. When I was doing all my inquiries, the other companies mentioned here seem to push the carpet demo too much and not willing for us to pick our own sites to see. We could not have been more pleased with Yelda and it was probably our favorite stop of the cruise!

[Onessa]

We took an Ephesis tour through the ship on our Celebrity Solstice cruise last year and the on-board tour folks and our tour guide made it very clear that the tour would end at a rug shop in Kusadasi about 1 block away from the dock and that we would be welcome to attend the demonstration and enjoy a complimentary beverage, or end the tour there (without even stepping so much as a foot into the show room).

 

About 20% of those on our bus simply left when we got back into town. No hassles and we were within a block of the port shops.

 

We went in just wanting to look at the showroom, but the guy was very friendly and made it clear he simply wanted to show us some of their rugs. There were about 30 of us -- we all received a complementary beverage (DD and I had a hot apple cider, DH had a turkish beer, and DH and I shared a shot of the Turkish version of Uzo). They rolled out rug after rug and talked about the meanings of the different patterns. When they were done, we were all allowed to leave with no pressure to buy anything. Two couples stayed behind to look at some rugs, I spoke to both afterwards, neither bought anything and said that they did not feel pressured to do so.

 

I would have been a bit disturbed if we had gotten stuck a few miles outside of town with no option to leave (like some friends of our got stuck at a leather "factory" three miles from city center on a RCCI Florence on your own tour). But how this was set up worked fine.