TopView London — Local services in London

If I could, I would leave zero stars but the system will not allow. My young family and I visited London the weekend just gone for a holiday. One of my children specifically requested to do a bus tour and was very excited when we said yes. Tickets cost us £70, we boarded the bus at 930am, to be told the ticket scanner was broken and didn't work. My excited children went to sit up on the open top deck, but all the seats were wet. It had not rained but was simply still wet from the overnight and it still being early they had not been checked and no one has bothered to simply dry them prior to the beginning of the round at 8am. After a few stops of listening and looking my children got cold due to being wet from the seats and wanted to move under the cover at the front of the bus. There were now a few more people on the bus and therefore seats under here were limited. Once we moved I realised why people had previously moved from their seats, because the headphone ports didn't work and you couldn't listen to the tour. There were no seats free for us to seat in, with working headphones ports so we sat on what was now a VERY expensive bus ride around London with no tour guide, which is the whole point of getting on the top view bus. My children were incredibly disappointed by this as was I! Other families were also affected, so not only could we not sit on the outside seats without getting wet, if you wanted to be warmer and dryer in February, you couldn't listen to the tour undercover as things were broken and not working properly. I raised this with the driver as my children quickly got bored so we got off having done 3 stops at a grand total of £70!!!!! I was directed to a ticket tout who could not offer me a refund for this poor service. I was directed to customer services who I phoned immediately and was told as their office is based in new York, they also cannot offer me a refund. I was directed to send an email to customer services and assured by Cynthia and the ticket tout that I would be given a refund by sending an email, I have today had a response, having had to further chase customer services and still not been given a refund.

Only use this service if you want disappointed and upset young children on a holiday to London!!

Do not use this abysmal service, they are happy to take your money and a lot of it, for what is a really poor service. I have now paid £70 to travel 2.9 miles in London.

Customers service is terrible and I would strongly not recommend

Update

This company also remove any negative comments made on their social media.

I have also followed their misleading advice in the response I received to this review (5 months later) and received the following response....... Still no refund for a truly awful and expensive experience. Avoid this company at all costs

We have already answered you back in March 2025 and informed you that the best and only resolution we had for you was to reissue your original tickets, 2 adult tickets for the HOP ON HOP OFF 24-HOUR SIGHTSEEING PASS, for 1 year, so you can use them again in London. We could also issue instead the same passes but for New York City.

Your tickets were scanned and used for our services. Unfortunately due to our all sales are final policy on used and unused tickets, we were and still unable to refund any portion of your total...

Awful experience with TopView! Choose another company if you want to tour London. The advertised schedules on their site or app do NOT match their actual schedule. The live map doesn’t work. River cruises cancelled without notification. The bus drivers and tour guides we asked didn’t know the basic operation schedules (what time is the first/last bus). We spent more time walking and taking the tube (subway) across town than the actual hop on hop off bus. Not reliable!

Here is a summary of our 24 hrs: Downloaded the TopView app and loaded our tickets. The live map does NOT work, despite this being a feature that is listed. Reserved our river cruise on the app as required. Note: The times listed do NOT match with the actual river cruise company schedule. Not helpful when planning your day. Planned our day based on the operation times listed on the app. Note: the operating hours listed on each bus stop do NOT match the actual operating schedule. Got to the bus stop closest to our hotel (#16) at 8am, which is the advertised start time for this stop on both the app and website. Waited 45 mins and NO bus arrived. Found one parked down the street and the driver informed us that the first bus at that stop is 9:30am (NOT 8am like the map says). Walked all the way to Trafalgar Square to meet our tour guide because we had reserved the Parks and Palace walking tour at 9:15am. Made our way to Westminster pier for the 2pm Thames river cruise we had reserved, and it was CANCELLED. No one informed us, despite having reserved on the app. City Cruises agent at Westminster pier was unhelpful and extremely rude (didn’t look up from her phone, rolled her eyes when I asked for a schedule). Had to jump on the tube to make it to the Tower of London stop on time for our Jack the Ripper walking tour since the cruise was cancelled. Spoke to the agent at the Tower pier and was told we could take the cruise back to Westminster (this was not an option on the app, otherwise we would have reserved this in the first place). Returned to the pier for our 5:15pm cruise and found it was CANCELLED AGAIN as well as the next one. Took the tube to Marble Arch station to catch the last Park and Palace Tour bus (blue route). Arrived at 5:37pm. Waited 20 mins and no bus arrived. Spoke to the driver of the Red route who said that the Blue route finishes earlier. Note: both the app and website say this tour runs until 6pm. Called the customer service line. Spoke to an agent and expressed my disappointment with the day. Requested a refund, and he said yes, just send an email to get a case opened. Did this and was informed no refund would be issued.

Wasted my whole day in London! Don’t spend your money on a company that doesn’t keep their schedule and has conflicting information on their...

Do not use this company! I purchased a two day pass for a party of seven(including two seniors with issues walking long distances) because it included several things like the Thames river cruise, free themed walking tours, and a night bus tour. As with most people purchasing a hop on/off bus, we are tourists not familiar with the area. Busses are extremely infrequent, you will watch the buses from every other company pick up/drop off SEVERAL times before one TopView bus comes. Directions on finding some stops are horrible, and in some cases completely incorrect. If you chose to get off at one stop and then try to get back on at a different stop that you have never been to, for example, you may or may not actually find the right spot. We tried to locate the Thames river cruise that is supposedly close to Tower of London, and wound up spending 40 minutes searching for what turned out to be an incorrect address printed in their brochure and online! When we finally found the dock, the boat company informed us that the cruises were not running on the promised time schedule and the next boat would be 45 mins to an hour wait. We missed our pre booked tea reservations (located nearby the dock on the opposite side of the Cruise /Thames) which cost us $130. We did enjoy the free Jack the Ripper walking tour; however it does not end at Tower Hill as stated. Instead you wind up in White Chapel, a minimum 20 minute walk from the nearest stop on the line. Due to this unexpected situation we had to spend money on an Uber to get back to the city quickly so we could make our timed tickets. The online reservation system for the night bus never showed us the proper dates so we were unable to book that at all. Had to pay to find a separate night bus as it was something members of our family really wanted to do.

Overall a horrible experience and waste of money. I contacted them about these issues- especially the completely incorrect address for the boat and other incorrect information printed in their brochure/online and they basically said “thanks for telling us.” Given the amount we spent to buy 7 two day passes, pay for our missed tea reservation, pay for Ubers to get back to the spot where we should have ended our tour and purchase a separate night bus tour…””thanks” doesn’t really seem like an appropriate response. Even customer service was slow and did not appear to care about the...