jat

Just got back from a Lady Egypt tour. I would definitely recommend them. I found Amanda to be extremely responsive at all times before our trip, and she promptly responded to my many questions. Mahmoud Salem was our guide in Cairo and he was great. We had another Mahmoud for the rest of our trip, and overall, he was good but not as personable or educated as Mahmoud Salem. There was one glitch: I had been promised a particular hotel I wanted in Luxor, but when I got to Cairo, I found out that they had booked another hotel. They weren't particularly apologetic, and when I insisted, they tried to get me in the hotel I had been promised, but said it was full. As some consolation they upgraded my room (slightly) in the hotel they booked for me, and the hotel turned out to be just fine and probably equivalent to the one I had been promised. Other than that, everything was pretty much as planned. One thing to know: if you wait and pay the balance when you get there, not only will they charge you the 3% surcharge for using a credit card, but they also give a really lousy exchange rate. They charge the balance in Egyptian pounds and not USD. One other thing to know: they tend to give out information at the last possible moment. Not sure why they didn't give us information more in advance, but it always seemed to be last-minute.
Again, though, I overall was happy with LE and would use them again.

MissGreen

I thought the government set the exchange rate and there was no variation.

Casual_Cairo

Any company can set their own exchange rate. In otherwords, had jax exachanged her USD to EGP at the bank, s/he would have gotten the fair and gov't rate (or VERY near to it) but if s/he paid LE in USD they can set any exchange rate they want to set. Often times they will set it at less favorable than the gov't rate because they may be covering themselves in the event they won't get to the bank for a few days to exchange the money and the rate may fall by then.

It is their right to do that, but the customers right to go to the bank and exchange their money and pay cash. In their case I guess they used a credit card as s/he mentions the 3% charge for credit card use, so they were covering themselves because they won't see the money in their acct immediately, I guess... or just because they can.

MissGreen

No idea what rate I paid!

sf7307

<<<No idea what rate I paid!>>>

Me either!