Niagara Wine Tours International — Local services in Niagara-on-the-Lake

There’s a reason why every other biking company in all of niagara on the lake gets booked before this company. I would recommend a self guided wine tour but not with this company. This is more expensive and require a 4:30 pm return with hefty late fees.

My group and I booked bikes and were happy that NWT was able to accommodate us in a short turn around. The employee we were greeted with was very nice and had the waivers and bikes ready. On our train over two people in our party decided to change their bikes to a tandem, so we called and asked if that was possible. They happily changed the bikes for us but did not tell us about the additional fees (which if we had know, we would not have changed the bikes).

We left and not even 5 minutes in the ride, one bike was in bad shape that we had to stop road side to figure out why the chain kept falling off. This happened several times and really slowed down our group on the way to the first winery. The manager did come and replace the bike for us at the first winery. The quality of all of our bikes were ok but definitely old and worn down bikes.

Finally, we had allotted 30 minutes to get back to the store, but unfortunately we did not realize they had another location with the same name in the completely opposite direction. We ended up getting back at 5pm, half an hour after the 4:30 time. They said we owed them 12 bucks per bike as the late fee. We explained what happened and that we tried our best to cycle back especially with all the issues we were faced with the bikes themselves throughout the day. This is where the manager destroyed our perception of the company with her approach.

She brought our organizer to an area behind the counter to discuss our situation and insisted that she can only speak to one person. We had noticed that our organizer was very tired and we know she has a history of feeling light headed and fainting in high heat days and having just biked 1hr straight in the heat at a fast pace to try to make the time. Our organizer expressed that if she can let one of us from the group speak to the manager instead, but the manager insisted that that was not possible. After 20 minutes of arguing and figuring out what to do, they finally dropped our late fees and we were able to get out of there with a very sour taste in our mouths.

We were appalled by the lack of customer service and understanding of our situation. On top of that, she replied to someone in our group’s review BLAMING him on the malfunctioning bike, stating that he did not know how to shift gears. That is so unprofessional and unheard of from any company!

If you do not want to add extra stress in your life, go with Zoom bikes, velo vino or literally any other bike rental company in the area. Book a few days early to get your spot with them so you do not end up dealing with a difficult company...

I booked a self guided wine tour and was unable to take the tour because of a lack of communication. We were running later then anticipated and did receive a call from a representative confirming our reservation at around 11:30, but she did not outline the meeting point or leave a call back number for us to contact her when we had further questions. We showed up at noon at the address listed on their website that is listed as the starting point for the tours, however, the door to this location was locked. We waited there for an hour calling multiple times, leaving voice mails, and sending a few emails. There were 6 of us in the group each of us tried the two different numbers listed with no answer. It wasn’t until 2:00 that any of us received a call back asking where we were. I explained that I had tried to call them multiple times with no answer, I was told this was because they do not accept incoming call, however, the lady I spoke with also left a voicemail on my friends phone with conflicting information, explaining that she missed all the calls because she had spent the last two hours in a wine cellar so she had no service to receive any calls. I proceeded to tell her that we chose to take a tour with Vino Velo (who stated that this year alone they have had 15 different groups book last minute tours with them who has originally booked with Niagara Wine Tours International because of the same issues I had so obviously this is a pattern).

I later reviewed my emails to see if I had missed any correspondence that causes my group to end up at the wrong location. In the various emails requesting information about the group and lunch order there was no specific mention that the meeting location would vary from that on the website. The only mention of this other location we were supposed to go to was on the visa receipt, somewhere that I wouldn’t normally think would be a place to look to get information about the tour itinerary, rather than just the total cost of the excursion.

Overall, we were disappointed that their lack of customer service prevented us from having an enjoyable group experience. We were very excited for this tour and were very disappointed by the disrespect from the tour company and their customer service representatives.

If there had been better communication this would have been a non-issue. If I had been able to get a hold of the company we would have been able to head over to their second location and being our tour. However, it took a full 2 hours to receive...

Be careful if you are planning a private event. Called to plan a Bachelorette party and was told its their busiest weekend and that I needed to book in like a day or two. So there was this huge sense of urgency. In order to get any information on pricing they needed a Credit card on file, which should have been a red flag. We got the information aabout pricing in an email, the break down for pricing was a little confusing. It started with the price of the bus $1440.00 plus HST, the price per guest was $139.00 plus HST. My planners for my Bachelorette were confused by the break down and thought the $139.00 per guest was including the bus (none of us have ever done a wine tour so we didn't know what to expect in terms of pricing) I emailed in the morning at 9:05 AM saying I would like to book but I had questions about deposits, for example how much it would be to book, which in the email they sent, there was absolutely no break down of that. I called and spoke with carrie on my lunch hour, to get questions answered and she told me that Karen has already processed payment on the credit card on file. I never received an email back in regards to the questions I had, they were ignored and nearly $2000.00 was attempted to be taken of my sisters credit card. Which I have no idea what this was for. It couldnt be the cost of the bus plus HST and a 3% credit card processing fee because that alone doesn't add up to $2000. Without proper communication from the organizers we panicked and wanted to cancel (all within a few hours of "booking" by the way) they told us that now we have to pay a cancellation charge of $25 per guest that was supposed to attend, plus HST. They didn't even respond to my email in response to the Cancellation charges where i mentioned again that i WANTED to book but i still had questions. They just ignored that email and tried to take about $360.00 from my sisters card. I sent an email in regards to this whole situation and even asked what the original $2000.00 was and haven't heard back. It's been 3 days. Thank God my sister had a prepaid Mastercard with no money because we would have been screwed. If someone if going to fork out 5 thousand dollars, there should be a crystal clear break down of pricing, deposits and balances due. AND questions answered before processing such a large payment. They just saw $$$ money...