Stromma — Local services in Amsterdam

Is the ride worth it?: It is Do they care about your experience?: No they don't

We reserved our tickets the day before, and our boat had some technical issue, so the ride was cancelled. The captain offered the money back but also told us that a replacement boat was on their way in case we still wanted to experience the ride.

We were too naive thinking "ok they are going to replace the boat and we will leave as soon as possible". Of course not, it was just the next boat in the next time slot available for customers. So we had to wait until the next scheduled ride was ready and full of the people that had bought tickets for that ride. Although that's not what our first captain had said.

After 30 minutes waiting on the first boat, we changed boat, it was raining like hell so we waited inside the 2nd boat for another additional 1h. When we told the 2nd captain "when are we going to leave? we've been waiting for so long", he just said "yes, so?"... and remained quiet.

I was flabbergasted with his response, he proceeded "you had a drink and you are going to have the ride, what else do you want?"...

We probably had bad luck with our second "captain", a bald guy. The captain is the public face of the company, I think by no means a response like that to a customer...

A total disappointment! My wife, our two sons and my grandmother booked a canal tour to get a view of the city from the water. Once we arrived at the dock, we were greeted with a somewhat annoyed and unprofessional stromma staff. The lady seemed frustrated that we brought our children to the tour and gave us a hand full of paper towels, warning us that the ice cream our son was enjoying (given to us by the company itself), better not end up on the seats, tables or windows. Before going on-board, she insisted that our stroller be folded up, although we were the only passengers on this tour. She told us to sit in the very back, without an explanation. Once we sat down, she scolded us for not realizing that "this is Corona time". Explaining to us that we should not have sat down in the cubicle, without considering asking her first. After getting in a small debate with her, explaining that I would not sit apart from my wife or kids, she went away even more annoyed.

During the tour, the audio stopped working, but she filled the void with hoping to teach us (and one other party that had joined at this time), Dutch phrases and the buildings she considered to be "ugly".

This was the worst tour I have ever taken. A complete disaster from...

We took a 75 minute canal tour from this vendor today and we were very disappointed, mainly in the route the boat took. We were shown a map (briefly) of the possible routes to tour could follow but that pilot did not any of those canals for most of our "tour". Instead, him drove us up to the main outlet to the bay, then through a series of major shipping lanes, then down the Amstel River. That was only on the traditional, romantic canals for about 25% of the ride. We felt a little ripped off frankly. The boat was nice and in good shape and the staff were all polite and professional, or the score would have been even lower.

Revised - after response - I have also since realized that there is a TON of construction going on in many, many of the canals, which closes them to all boat traffic. It might be that the captain had fewer options this year than they have had on our previous visits. I am revising my ratings accordingly - but tourists should beware - the canal cruises will be different this year than in the past. Also - either revised or don't show people the map of...