Shore Excursions Group
reviews and complaints

I booked and paid for - twice- excursions in Hawaii. Kona Coffee and Land of Frozen Fire. Twice I entered the customer's credit card and have never received acknowledgement of the booking or the vouchers he'll need. Phone number doesn't work. No email address. Guess I'll be booking future tours with the cruise line. I'm also thinking about canceling the 2 that did get through. What is going on with this company? They want me to enroll my clients? Absolutely not!

I booked a scuba diving tour with them, but I was not able to find the meeting location basing on the instructions provided. This complaint is regarding cruise excursion order XXXXXXX, Two Tank Dive for Certified Divers in Acapulco, Mexico. I missed my tour because of two things. First, the location provided is ambiguous. I cannot find the meeting location. Second, I tried to call the local agent to clarify 40 minutes before departure but nobody answered my repeated calls. What happened on that day? I disembarked 45 minutes ahead of excursion meeting time to find the meeting location. After leaving the cruise terminal, I am trying to follow the instruction to find the Fort San Diego entrance across the street. However, I realize the Fort San Diego I am seeing is a huge structure with no clear indication of the entrance, and I am looking at a divided road with no sign of a crosswalk anywhere within my sight. At this time, I tried to call the local agent repeatedly but nobody picked up the phone. (And I had been repeatedly calling since this point but the phone was not answered until after the meeting time.) With no idea how to get to the entrance, and no more instructions provided, I followed the Google Map walking navigation to the entrance and arrived 15 minutes before meeting time. However, I did not see anyone there till departure time. Only a closed gate. With frustration, I started walking back to the cruise ship. (While walking, I have also called the U.S. customer service number while walking there but they also could not reach the local agent. ) Later I did a lot of research and realized the meeting location is not the main entrance but a secondary entrance on the other side. The crosswalk would only be visible after walking 500 feet up north. The crosswalk was not visible from the cruise terminal due to the road side trees and visitors walking along the way. I am frustrated that the provided meeting instruction did not specify a clear location nor a well defined way to get there or a precise reference point. If the provided location is as clear as many other cruise excursion meeting instructions, with a map or a geo coordinates, I wouldn't have missed the tour. And if the tour guide picked up the phone before the tour departs, I would have had the chance to ask for clarification. I booked the tour with them instead of booking with the cruise line because of their promise to provide "Easy to Find" tours as advertised on their website. Providing an ambiguous location, referring to two points miles away, with reference points not visible from the cruise terminal is clearly not "easy to find" for me. They also promised "24/7 emergency hotline" which was also not helpful when problems actually arise. I am contacting ComplaintsBoard.com to resolve this issue because my previous attempt to contact them was not only unsuccessful but also irritating. I first called them to resolve this issue on the same day of the tour, they took my message and told me they had to contact the business for an investigation. On my following calls later that month, the agent responsible for the case was out and I was told to wait for a response. The next time I called, I was told that they had marked the case resolved internally because the tour operator claimed I participated the tour, which is an outright lie. I informed them the tour operator gave them misinformation and I was again told to wait. Later I contacted them again via email and was told to wait again and got a response one week later saying "Management advised a 10% Off future order" without explaining any fault on their side.