Vic Key

Review of Discover Hawaii Tours

- Puts customers at risk to make a quick $ and no ...

- Puts customers at risk to make a quick $ and no customer service despite cutting a tour 3 hour short -

Discover Hawaii Tours put its customers at risk because they did not want to cancel the tour despite the eruptions at Mt Kilauea.

We had booked a tour for Friday May 4 weeks ago, and on May 3, the eruption happened. This was widely reported in the news and all the people on Big Island had government warnings.

Being concerned, we left phone messages in the afternoon before the tour, and called again at 5am in the morning to enquire whether the tour would go ahead. We were also concerned that we wouldn't be able to do any activities if the Park was to be closed (turns out us foreigners are more knowledgable in this regard than this company). No one picked up the phone and no one ever called back throughout the day. The pickup driver came and told us all was fine, and we flew out from Oahu.

On the Big Island, it was a pretty boring morning, mainly consisting of visits to random gift shops. We immediately had government warning messages on our phones about 'extremely high sulphur dixoide levels' and then sat through the 6.9 earthquake during lunch (not fun). When we reached the National Park, we were predictably turned away by the rangers (pretty much what we expected the day before the tour). There were NO backup activities planned, and every shop were closed - this is not an exaggeration, macadamia factory, orchard farm, visitor centres were all closed. Out of ideas, the tour guide dropped us off back at the airport at 3.45pm, well over 3 hours before the tour was meant to end. We did none of the advertised activities, and the company never bothered to reach out to any of the customers.

There were 11 of us needing to go back to Oahu, and we were told Discover Hawaii Tours will not help us book an earlier flight back out of fear of paying for $50 fee for us, and we need to cover this ourselves (actually, Hawaiian Airlines had a policy waiving this fee due to the eruption, the tour company just didn't bother to take 2 seconds to check online). Unfortunately, no flights were available by the time and we all sat there waiting for 4 hours (we could have got the earlier flights if the company bothered to check with Hawaiian Airlines earlier and arranged on our behalf). Being disappointed, we called the company only to be told all the managers went home - again, no follow up after leaving a message.

We get that things like this happen, but the tour should have been cancelled, or backup activities should have been organised. We all suspect it s because Discover Hawaii Tours cannot get refunds from Hawaiian Airlines for us and so decided to go ahead with the tour.

Worse is that I am also waiting for refunds on two other overbooked/cancelled tours from this same company, and nothing after 2 weeks. I have called several times and emailed 4 times, so now I have to chase up my credit card provider to get a chargeback.

There are enough tourists going to Hawaii so this company does not care about customer service. My advice: book the flights yourself and hire a car, or go with another tour company.

P.S. I have no photos to share for this review because we did nothing on this tour.