I booked online about a month ago for a 2:30 tour today. The website offered two time slots, 10 am or 2:30 pm. I purposely picked the 2:30 tour because it was our first time in Charleston, we don’t know the city, and didn’t want to fumble our way there during Monday morning rush hour. I wanted to have a good time buffer to find parking and get our bearings. At 10 am this morning (morning of my scheduled tour) I received a phone call from the tour company asking why we weren’t there as we were scheduled for 10 am. I advised that no, in fact, I scheduled for 2:30 pm. I had the email confirmation printed out sitting right in front of me. The caller sounded a tad confused but didn’t argue with me and just said “uhhh...ok then”. I figured just a mistake since I had the booking confirmation, all should be good. We got to town about an hour early and were hanging out in the park across the street from the meeting place when I received another call at about 1:15 pm, again stating they had me down for 10 am. I again said no, I booked for 2:30. I was told they had no one available for 2:30 and on their end it clearly said I was set for 10 am, despite the email confirmation I was looking at that said 2:30, and despite the phone call earlier where I wasn’t met with any argument after saying nope, 2:30. They offered to refund or reschedule for the next day at 10 am (so is the 2:30 pm tour not even an option? It wasn’t offered, but it’s clearly a time slot on the website). I already had another tour for Ft Sumter booked the following morning so that wasn’t an option for me. They did agree to refund my ticket purchase.
I looked at several different tour group options and picked this company specifically because of the great reviews and how knowledgeable the guide was. It was a real bummer because having never been here before, I was really looking forward to a waking history tour with someone who had some in-depth knowledge of the area.
I ended up buying a walking tour book from the gift shop on Meeting Street which was easy to follow, fortunately, but only gave tiny blurbs about each location it highlighted and I felt like I had to pay more attention to the book to stay on track than appreciate what I was looking at. We ended up passing by other walking tours in progress I know I missed out on a lot of cool information and history.
I’m sure this is a great tour and a really knowledgeable guide and I’m really bummed I didnt get to experience it. Again I get glitches happen and I’m not looking to sound like a whiner, but I know I didnt make a mistake here. I would suggest you call to book instead of going through the website or call to confirm your booking so you aren’t stuck clueless like I was.
We still had a good time.
