Do not mess with Bon-Tour!

Never again will I use the services of the company "Bon-Tour", because the organization of the tour and the work of the leader of the group were very bad.

1) At the conclusion of the contract, we were told that since my wife and I take the train to Dno and also get off on the way back to Dno, the cost of railway tickets will be reduced accordingly. Why wasn't it done? Links to certain group tickets do not convince us: we are ready to pay only for those services that we originally ordered and which we used. Everything else is your problem, gentlemen.

2) When choosing a tour, we were guided by the fast train No. 49/50, which was originally declared in the program. However, we were traveling by passenger train No. 547/550. In addition to the fact that due to the difference in the schedule we had to significantly change our plans on the day of departure and on the day of arrival, the difference in ticket prices between fast and passenger trains is known to everyone.

Why didn't anyone compensate us for this difference?

3) The representative of the travel agent assured us in writing that the head of the group would meet us at the bottom of the car, and the conductors would be warned. However, when boarding at the Vitebsk railway station, the head of the group, Irina Korshunova, told our daughter that she did not know anything about it, and this was only our problem, where we were going to board the train. In Dno, no one met us at the carriage, we ourselves woke up the conductor by knocking on the door, and for the first time we saw the leader of the group, Irina Korshunova, only in Brest, on the bus.

A similar situation, by the way, happened on the way back. The head of the group, Irina Korshunova, promised that one of the guides with a group ticket would meet the group at the car and arrange our boarding. We found the train on our own and not where the head of the group, Irina Korshunova, said.

We all got into the car on our own, without waiting for any of the guides and begging the conductor. No one warned the guides that anyone from the group was going to the Bottom. We had to wake up the conductor of the neighboring car so that they would open the door to the Bottom and let us out of the car.

4) Car No. 14, in which we were given seats, was not prepared for the trip, because the conductor celebrated the New Year for too long (she herself admitted that she could not even carry a glass of tea ...). As a result, already after three hours of travel in an unheated carriage, our daughter fell ill and was forced to go to the Bottom, refusing to pay for the tour at the very beginning. None of the members of the tour group traveling in the same car saw or heard that the head of the group, Irina Korshunova, made any real efforts to correct the situation. As far as we understand, we did not pay for extreme travel conditions.

Who should be held responsible for the spoiled mood and disrupted trip of the members of the tour group?

5) Upon arrival in Brest, we independently, according to the principle “where people go, we go there”, looked for a bus stop, then among dozens of buses in complete darkness, shying away from cars in the middle of the roadway, we were looking for our bus. Having found the bus, they tried to independently determine the order of counting the rows. The leader of the group, Irina Korshunova, was not on the bus at that time. As a result of searches, seating and transferring, we all lost a lot of time (25 minutes from the first tourists getting on the bus to the start of movement), ended up at the Brest checkpoint at the tail of the queue and spent 6.5 hours crossing the border. Who should be held responsible for the poor organization of the train-bus transfer?

6) On all the days of our trip (with the exception of the last night in Brest) we had to wake up at 6-00 or 6-30 in order to have breakfast and then to the bus. The head of the group, Irina Korshunova, explained this by the fact that "the time for the start of the excursion has already been set." As far as we understand, we paid for the rest, and not for the "fun starts" in the pioneer camp. We were somewhat ready to put up with an early rise on the days of moving to Vienna and Dresden, but on the rest of the days, we are convinced that our schedule should have been planned more intelligently.

7) On the very first day of our trip, the head of the group, Irina Korshunova, began to very persistently recommend various additional excursions and collective meals for an additional fee to us. At the same time, she assured that "whoever wants to dine on their own will spend two hours and find nothing."

(By the way, they found it without difficulty, and quite inexpensively ...) Members of the group who wished to take part in a collective dinner, but asked not to order a separate portion for children (say, "little ones" ...), were refused without explanation. The children naturally left the plates almost untouched. Who will explain what justified such actions of Irina Korshunova?

8) The team leader Irina Korshunova strongly recommended buying pomegranate jewelry in a certain store, offering an 8% discount coupon and assuring that the goods were certified only in this store. However, in other stores they showed us certificates, and they offered us a discount of up to 40%. Who will explain such persistence of Irina Korshunova?

In 2006, we also went to Prague from the Bon-Tour company, and we have the warmest memories of that trip.

Guide Ekaterina Zaretskaya during the trip gave a lot of useful practical information, namely: at what rate and where it is better to change the currency, where it is easier and cheaper to have a bite, what are the local dishes and what are they called, how to contact the locals if necessary etc. We heard nothing of this from Irina Korshunova. The information she gave was very sparse, fragmentary and often differed significantly from reality. Passing through Brno, we heard a detailed story about the quality of Cebo shoes, but learned practically nothing about the history of this ancient city. Driving past the ancient Wroclaw-Breslau, we learned almost only about the salt auctions held there in the Middle Ages. In the main part of her travel stories, Irina Korshunova often showed negligence (if not incompetence). We were greatly amused, for example, by the following passages:

a) "Napoleon revived the Polish state, but his fate was short: already in 1939 Germany attacked Poland."

b) "The Tatras are not very high mountains, because they are young mountains."

The guides who led separate excursions for us also did not impress quite competent specialists. On the contrary, the following turnovers were impressive:

a) "Napoleon crossed the Elbe in 1807 and persuaded the Saxon duke to participate against Russia in the Great Patriotic War."

b) The answer to the question, what does the inscription in large gold letters on the attic of the main facade of the Zwinger mean: “it is written in Latin, you can read it yourself.”

At the same time, all the “local” guides began their story by mentioning how long they had been living in Vienna (Dresden), but could not answer a single additional question (“what is this monument on the square dedicated to?”, “who is the author of the huge mosaic panel on the main facade?” etc.).

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