Review of 4 Days Private Tour by Bullet Train (Shanghai -Beijing) by Alvin

This review does not reflect our tour guide, Summer, and driver, Mr. Liu, excellent service. The low rating is mainly for Chinatour's organizational skill and communication skills. There were many mishaps on the first day of travels that I have to downgrade the stars rating and here is what had happened. If you are interested to book with this company, please read our experience before booking and you can decide if you want to deal with them. We were picked up from our hotel in Shanghai on time at 5am and safely arrived at the train station. Our train was scheduled to leave at 7:12am. It took us a moment to know where to retrieve our tickets. But we were denied of our tickets because Chinatour had made a mistake with both of our passport numbers, there was an addition of a digit “1” in front of our passport numbers. We didn’t know what to do but to call Nancy who was the one that had been communicating with us via emails since we booked the tour back in September. She told us to cancel the tickets (get a refund) and then purchased another pair. We were able to cancel but there was a 20% cancellation fee. However, we could not purchase the second class of tickets for the same train unless we upgraded to first class. We didn’t want to miss our first day of tour (according to the itinerary, we were scheduled to go to Summer Palace that afternoon), so we booked the first class tickets for the same train. We were told to meet the tour guide, Summer, at Exit 5 at Beijing train station, so when we walked out of Exit 7, we approached Exit 5 and no one was there to pick us up. Again, we contacted Nancy, she told us that Summer was there but didn’t see us. After 30 min later, we finally met up with Summer, turned out that she was looking for us at Exit 7. We didn’t understand why we were told to go to Exit 5 when we came out of Exit 7, hence, the mixed up and waste of time. There was no communication between Chinatour and the tour guide. Then in the car, Summer told us that it is best to visit Summer Palace next day in the morning along with other places (if we have known that it was easy to change the itinerary, we would have purchase second class tickets with a later time). Also, she asked us what shows (Kung Fu or Acrobat) to watch. I was not very happy because we had told Nancy in the email that we wanted Kung Fu show on September 22. We don’t know why there was no communication between the company and its tour guide. So, the driver, Mr. Liu and Summer pretty much just dropped us off at the hotel and gave us some pointers as to where to go for dinner and left. When we checked in, the hotel couldn’t find us! So, we had to call Nancy again and took them almost 30 min to get us a room. After we went into our room, we called Nancy again, she admitted that they made the mistake on our train tickets (had something to do with their system), so she agreed to pay for the 20% cancellation fee plus half of the cost of the first class tickets upgrade. I thought that they should have taken care of the whole thing but given that we haven’t even started on the tour, we didn’t want anymore trouble, but as of now, we still have not seen any refund money. Summer was great. If it wasn’t for her planning, we would have given this tour a “0” star if possible. She and the driver, Mr. Liu, were always on time picking us up. The highlight of the tour was the Mutianyu Great Wall on the third day. She told us to leave at 7am and arrived there at 8:30am. There weren’t many people so we got to enjoy the majestic place to ourselves before it got crowded by 10am. Summer’s English was decent. Mr. Liu’s driving skill was exceptional good. Couple more things that we don’t like the tour, one was the shopping experience. We don’t mind them taking us to places that trying to sell us things (silk blankets, Chinese medicine, jade, and tea). But the sale people are extremely pushy and things were way overpriced. Beware! I don’t recommend buying anything. Second thing was the Peking duck dinner we added to the tour was overpriced. We were taken to a famous Peking duck restaurant, Summer told us to order dishes ourselves. Because it was just the two of us, we only ordered half a duck plus two dishes. Total cost was under 300 RMB but we paid US$46 per person, meant that we had a budget of about 644 RMB. My suggestion is to go to get Peking duck dinner yourself elsewhere. In conclusion, we had a stressful first day of the tour (even though it was just merely traveling from Shanghai to Beijing by bullet train) because of the mistake of Chinatour booking and miscommunication between them and the tour guide and the hotel. The rest of the tour had some good (excellent tours of places by Summer) and bad (terrible shopping experience and overpriced Peking Duck dinner). Because of the multiple mishaps on the first day, I doubt we will book with this company again.