After reading a few good reviews, I finally decided to book the Ocean Road trip with Wine Hop and Coastal Tours. The scheduled time was 7:00am on Sep 8, 2024. I got a message on Sep 6 that our pick up time has been changed to 6:35am at a slightly different location. As there was no scope to change the trip at such a short notice, inspite of the inconvenient timing, we decided to stick to the tour.
As there was an elderly couple travelling with me with one of them having knee issue, I rushed and reached the venue at 6:38am, whereas the other members arrived at 6:44 am, which were delays of 3 minutes and 9 minutes respectively. As I was expecting a slight delay, I messaged on their number which I believed was the tour guide’s number at 6:31am (Melbourne Time) while we were walking towards the location.
What followed post that was derogatory and humiliating to say the least.
Warren got down from the bus instead of offering us seats and in full view of everyone, he gave an earful regarding being late. Almost all his comments began with the statement, “Don’t know about your country but here in Australia you have to play by the rules”, clearly asserting some form of dominance and bullying. He also threatened to leave us out in the cold if we got late later on during the day. He singlehandedly completely ruined the experience right from the start to the extent that one of my co-travellers was traumatized and found it very hard to participate in the activities later on in the day.
Warren has a perfectly disguised two-pronged approach. He can be “nice” to someone with a smile one moment and then turn passive aggressive the next to another person. During the stop at Melba Gully rainforest, my friend approached him looking to clarify things and asked him to apologize for the treatment meted out to her parents to which he tried to shut us down, mocked us with hand gestures and later on got up on the bus and said “Don’t participate in a yelling match with me cause you guys won’t win.”, whereas all that was pointed to him was he had no right to humiliate women. He also further added, “I am expecting a review from you guys.”
Warren has an extremely racial way of functioning and his behaviour is different for different sets of people (which kind of justifies some of the decent reviews he received). He also added statements in the end, “it doesnt matter what reviews come, good or bad, I get paid the same.” and “Me and my boss read reviews together and laugh.”
I have used Get Your Guide for multiple tours in the past and I met amazingly kind tour guides. We had amazing experiences in Sydney, Melbourne and Tasmania over a 2-week period. However, this hands down was the worst experience and straight up derogatory, all thanks to Warren.
Even though there has been a delay of approximately 7-8 minutes, the same could have been conveyed politely instead of racial threats and intimidation considering the delay was miniscule with respect to the whole trip being of duration 12-13 hours.
Additionally, once I returned to India, Warren called up threatening to remove the Google review which shows how the company operates.