tours of china from australia
Feb 24th, 2008, 07:33 PM
#21
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I know there's little point in pursuing this, and the OP has made it clear what he's looking for (which clearly isn't tours in the manner of China Focus) and feels sufficiently well-informed, but these arguments just need looking at again.
> We may be overcharged at the tour company shopping stops but it's still not that much money.
I try at this point to imagine myself coming back from a trip to the U.S. and saying, 'My tour was fine. They got me to pay $12.50 for something that should have cost a dollar so they could get a $5 kick-back. But that's OK. I don't mind. It's not much.'
I believe you'd think me quite strange if I said any such thing.
> You need a lot of "free" time on a tour to search out good shopping deals. I don't notice that you mention how one would do that.
A bit of rhetoric here, I see. I didn't mention how else you might shop because it wasn't germane to the discussion, but I don't see how the argument 'It's OK if they ripped me off because the tour didn't give me time to shop in a non rip-off way,' can possibly be persuasive.
And the way in which the problem is posed is anyway inappropriate: it's not that 'good shopping deals' have to be 'searched out', but that here you are being led into the worst shopping deals there are.
If you choose a tour that's so relentless you have no time for yourself that's your own responsibility: there are plenty of other options available. And if you do have time for yourself the answer on shopping is the rather obvious one that you look in guide books, in locally produced English-language magazines, a wide variety of on-line sources (including the websites of guides and magazines) and ask in places such as this, as myriad independent travellers and those on a longer leash do every year.
Even were you (and this is practically impossible) to end up in exactly the same places are your tour guides take you, you would nevertheless encounter much easier bargaining to lower prices since the shop owner or stall holder would not be from the very first calculating the 40%-50% he would need to pay to the guide.
Indeed there's an accidental hint at the truth here that guides often go out of their way to suggest that somewhere you're heading will rip you off so that you go with them where they know you'll be ripped off for their benefit. In short there's a reason why you have little free time on such tours. That way your shopping takes place at places that suite the guides.
And finally if you regret (as stated elsewhere) not walking away from tour group dinners (a desire which also perhaps suggests that they are not all they might be), then it is also possible to walk away from them in order to both dine and shop, very many shops remaining open until very late in the evening (although there are fewer markets).
> Tour companies "suggest" tipping amounts for guide and driver but it is not obligatory. Usually you would follow the guidelines but if your tour guide is terrible, forget the tip and write to the company.
I'm sorry, but the point has been entirely missed here. Even to 'suggest' a tip for anyone other than a foreign tour leader is a gross abuse of you as a customer and a deceitful way of keeping the published tour price artificially low so that 'tips' and back-handers will provide fat profits. You shouldn't be writing to the company; in fact you shouldn't be using it in the first place.
And when the proposal of tipping is made it is indeed very often in a form which makes clear that it is obligatory (so not a 'tip' in any usual sense even supposing tipping were appropriate in China), and also it is common for the pressure to tip to be quite intense on tours. As it happens one China Focus guide has posted on a public forum to say that those not prepared to tip shouldn't join China Focus tours, which is outrageous. So clearly 'tipping' isn't optional, and since it seems that it wasn't resisted in this case, the expectation that it actually was optional wasn't put to the test.
Many thousands of people come back happy from fully escorted tours to China without having had the slightest clue of all that's been practised upon them, and the aim here is certainly not to spoil memories of an enjoyable trip. Neither are the shenanigans mentioned unique to the particular company named, although this company's spamming of some sites and the abusive postings of some of its guides unhappy to see these issues discussed put it further beyond the pale than most.
Of all the companies I've spoken to it has the highest number of shopping stops, and according to some accounts they are in fact more numerous even than declared to me. The point is to provide those who have yet to book with the information to help them ask informed questions and make informed decisions, so they can either consider other ways of travelling, make a more careful selection of tour company, or book with one of the more exploitative ones in the full knowledge of what they are getting into, and be able to avoid the worst of the cheating.
Peter N-H
> We may be overcharged at the tour company shopping stops but it's still not that much money.
I try at this point to imagine myself coming back from a trip to the U.S. and saying, 'My tour was fine. They got me to pay $12.50 for something that should have cost a dollar so they could get a $5 kick-back. But that's OK. I don't mind. It's not much.'
I believe you'd think me quite strange if I said any such thing.
> You need a lot of "free" time on a tour to search out good shopping deals. I don't notice that you mention how one would do that.
A bit of rhetoric here, I see. I didn't mention how else you might shop because it wasn't germane to the discussion, but I don't see how the argument 'It's OK if they ripped me off because the tour didn't give me time to shop in a non rip-off way,' can possibly be persuasive.
And the way in which the problem is posed is anyway inappropriate: it's not that 'good shopping deals' have to be 'searched out', but that here you are being led into the worst shopping deals there are.
If you choose a tour that's so relentless you have no time for yourself that's your own responsibility: there are plenty of other options available. And if you do have time for yourself the answer on shopping is the rather obvious one that you look in guide books, in locally produced English-language magazines, a wide variety of on-line sources (including the websites of guides and magazines) and ask in places such as this, as myriad independent travellers and those on a longer leash do every year.
Even were you (and this is practically impossible) to end up in exactly the same places are your tour guides take you, you would nevertheless encounter much easier bargaining to lower prices since the shop owner or stall holder would not be from the very first calculating the 40%-50% he would need to pay to the guide.
Indeed there's an accidental hint at the truth here that guides often go out of their way to suggest that somewhere you're heading will rip you off so that you go with them where they know you'll be ripped off for their benefit. In short there's a reason why you have little free time on such tours. That way your shopping takes place at places that suite the guides.
And finally if you regret (as stated elsewhere) not walking away from tour group dinners (a desire which also perhaps suggests that they are not all they might be), then it is also possible to walk away from them in order to both dine and shop, very many shops remaining open until very late in the evening (although there are fewer markets).
> Tour companies "suggest" tipping amounts for guide and driver but it is not obligatory. Usually you would follow the guidelines but if your tour guide is terrible, forget the tip and write to the company.
I'm sorry, but the point has been entirely missed here. Even to 'suggest' a tip for anyone other than a foreign tour leader is a gross abuse of you as a customer and a deceitful way of keeping the published tour price artificially low so that 'tips' and back-handers will provide fat profits. You shouldn't be writing to the company; in fact you shouldn't be using it in the first place.
And when the proposal of tipping is made it is indeed very often in a form which makes clear that it is obligatory (so not a 'tip' in any usual sense even supposing tipping were appropriate in China), and also it is common for the pressure to tip to be quite intense on tours. As it happens one China Focus guide has posted on a public forum to say that those not prepared to tip shouldn't join China Focus tours, which is outrageous. So clearly 'tipping' isn't optional, and since it seems that it wasn't resisted in this case, the expectation that it actually was optional wasn't put to the test.
Many thousands of people come back happy from fully escorted tours to China without having had the slightest clue of all that's been practised upon them, and the aim here is certainly not to spoil memories of an enjoyable trip. Neither are the shenanigans mentioned unique to the particular company named, although this company's spamming of some sites and the abusive postings of some of its guides unhappy to see these issues discussed put it further beyond the pale than most.
Of all the companies I've spoken to it has the highest number of shopping stops, and according to some accounts they are in fact more numerous even than declared to me. The point is to provide those who have yet to book with the information to help them ask informed questions and make informed decisions, so they can either consider other ways of travelling, make a more careful selection of tour company, or book with one of the more exploitative ones in the full knowledge of what they are getting into, and be able to avoid the worst of the cheating.
Peter N-H
