Doing some research on Tours by Locals and how they treat their guides I came across several references to difficulties guides had dealing with the Tours by Locals team. I want to share a very bad experience I recently had with this company. I’ve been guiding for them for quite a few years – they don’t send to many customers my way, but its nice to do tours every once in a while. I make a little extra money, as well as for the booking company via a percentage they take (Tours by Locals) and it gives me a chance to share my knowledge of the wine region where I guide.
I’ve always gone the extra distance for tours and clients – and work with them directly to meet their needs. I’ve always delivered the agreed upon tours. I’ve also never encouraged customer reviews as this is a very part time business – however I do get them every once in while. One latest review clearly had a personal agenda and was a negative review.
Tours by Locals then started harassing me to deal with that review even though I never reply to any reviews especially such as this one which had some sort of agenda not related to the actual tour and no substantial information about why that person gave a bad review. This company then started calling me repeatedly, leaving phone messages and emailing me. Then they accused me of hiring another guide in my place to conduct the tour by sending out an email to me about their policy of not hiring other guides (I’ve never done this).
Then out of the blue about 6 weeks after they finally stopped harassing me they decided to completely lock out my guide account after years of guiding for them and also locking me out of several pending tours. Wow – this is certainly one way to deal with your guides. Talk about amazing service.
If you don’t treat people right (in this case their guides) you will lose good people. Tour by Locals is rotten to the core in that regard.
I would be *very* careful when using this company and or as a guide deciding whether or not you should sign up with them. There are plenty of other companies offering similar services for both guides and clients interested in booking tours – I would certainly think twice when considering using Tours by Locals for any service.