Happy Travels Queenstown — Local services in South Island

THE CAPITAL OF HEADACHES AND LIES

Introduction: As my experience with Happy Travels Queenstown was beyond horrible, I feel like it’s my obligation to write this review and to warn other lost tourists from making the same mistakes we did. It all comes down to one thing and it’s very simple really: DO NOT BOOK WITH HAPPY TRAVELS. At least not the store that’s on 30 Shotover St, Queenstown, where Kieran and Christian (store owner) works.

I’m usually not a person who writes long bad reviews but this service (jesus christ) and these people were so rude and shady that I could happily spend hours on explaining how bad it was. Please continue to my list below:

Empty promises Lets take it from the top: They promised us better deals and packages than other companies and they even offered a free kayak activity just so we would book with them. This all sounded too good to be true so we asked for everything to be sent on email just to have it on writing. But did they send anything? Of course not. Hell started here.

They also promised to be available at all times and that we could chat with them on WhatsApp if we had any problems. Did they keep this promise? Of course not. One time we tried to chat on WhatsApp (with Kieran) and it took a while for him to respond and once he just quit responding. They even complained on us for not calling the office even though we clearly informed that we won’t have any money on our phones. And it wasn’t a problem at the time.

About the free kayak activity: It didn’t happen (chocker). We actually wanted to book this in advance but they told us to wait until we got to Noosa (where the kayak were supposed to be). Although once we got there, Christian had suddenly “forgot” that he offered it for free and also forgot that the kayak company was in a different city, which we already passed.

Attitude As the things above happened they were extremely rude during the communication. They even had the gut to accuse us for misunderstanding them “since our first language isn’t English”. Yes you heard me. They sank to a ridiculously low level where they even had to drag in our nationalities. And to be fair, English is as high prioritised in school as Swedish is.

To get in touch with them in general was also super hard and annoying. We constantly had to send messages, emails, try to call from strangers phones over and over again. Just to get a hold of someone.

No knowledge about the products The first problem was Greyhound bus passes. They told us that we could cancel a booking anytime but it’s actually not true - You can’t cancel if it’s less than one hour. They didn’t know this nor did they care to try to help us once we wanted couldn’t make it to the bus.

My favourite screw up: The free kayak experience they promised was actually with a company that DON’T EVEN EXIST ANYMORE. I mean how? How can someone be stupid enough to sell something that don’t even exist?

They didn’t even seem to know our route in general and it was very clear that they haven’t experienced anything of what they sell.

Summary This experience was 10 times worse than if we would to do it everything ourselves. I’m truly so glad that this horrible experience is over, and my only tip for the people who read this is to not ever, EVER even consider booking with this company. Unless you like to have a headache. That’s...

WORST travel agency I have EVER experienced. Please book with someone else! I waited in the dark and minus degrees from 6.45am since I was told my bus would arrived 7.05am so I didn’t want to be late. The time goes by and it’s 7.20. I’m alone and starting to get worried if they forgot about me. I call the worker who I booked my ticket through on WhatsApp (which is written on my ordrer), since I don’t have money to call anyone. She tells me to wait even 10min more!! (Let me remind you it’s minus degrees.) I tell her if its okay I write her on whatsapp if they are still not here since I Can not call anyone. She says ok. I write her after 10min, No answers. I text my friend to Call the bus agency. They tell him that happy travels made a mistake, and therefore the bus has gone without me. My friend has to pass this information further to me, since the girl never gave me text/call back even though it was her mistake. I got back crying since I was really cold after waiting 1 hour in minus degrees without any information. We go the travel agency to get my full refund back, and ask if there is any compensation for this mistake, hoping they would at least give me a discount on something else. It was my last day in Queenstown so my possibility to see Milford Sound was ruined by this travel agency’s mistake. We were received with sarcasm and rudeness and they wouldn’t take ownership of what happend. I got my refund, but left speechless of the treatment they gave me. It was suppose to be a logical day which was ruined thanks to Happy Travels/...

We were walking past and the salesperson from inside got us in. Guy with a long hair tied up and had an accent ( English I guess ) - he kept pushing us to go for the expensive jet ride. We didn’t have any plans and we were trying to work it out to our schedule and decided to go for the budget one, he made up a story and said and the budget one isn’t good and we need to go for the expensive one he was plain rude and pushy, wouldn’t let us leave without signing up for something. I can write more about the worst experience we had, this happened two days ago. But my rating says it all. Well, it should be in negative. Customer service is an art, stop harassing and abusing people. I didn’t want to stoop down to your level hence I didn’t argue and walked away. My name will be on your system as I did end up buying the tickets from your other branch “ happy travels” just around the corner. He kept it simple, he understood what we needed and the whole process took about less than 5 mins. Overall our trip was good except for this few mins ruined by the sales person. Just a heads up to the tourists “ avoid the guy with long hair at any cost “ the name board says I center - tour bookings and they have a black board outside with the prices on it across all...