Vail Backcountry Tours — Local services in Vail

Terrible experience!!! First I booked for an original date and then they called me back a few days later because they had overbooked us, making us rearrange our whole trip and a couple friend of ours loosing out on this experience because they had no more room for them to go on the snowmobile. Then, a day before the experience, my husband looses his phone on the mountain, we tried moving the snowmobile experience so we could try at least the next day to go and find out. Again, they said no we are booked you will loose your reservation, ok we understood that. At this point, two family members had been feeling sick (maybe altitude sickness) and the day of the experience they woke up even worse with diarrhea and terrible migraines. At this point too I had terrible chest pressure and mucus and my sister in law had a sprained knee from snowboarding the day before. So clearly none of us in a state to go snowmobiling (at this point we have completely forgotten about the phone, long gone) I called again to see if they had some sort of sick policy (like most places do) and to that the manager said and I quote from her words “You don’t even sound that sick” WOW terrible staff with terrible management!!! I even told the manager she could come to our airbnb to see how sick we all are and she again answered with sarcasm. Terrible person. So yeah this company dosen’t believe in people getting sick or are compassionate about anything. All they care about is making money. So look elsewhere for snowmobiling because these people suck!!! Everyone knows people can get sick especially being in higher altitude or accidents happen on the mountain every day, these people will not care and keep your money!!! Oh and to that the manager will be sarcastic and act like a doctor telling you that you’re not sick, shame on you!

01/17 editing this review to respond to your ridiculous and untruthful response below:

On January 14th, I called to see if I could move my morning reservation the next day to the afternoon one so my husband could go and try to find his phone that he lost on the slopes. To which you responded with a negative answer saying that there was no point in doing so - didn’t ask for your opinion on that but ok. Your “small company” which has 20 employees (not actually small) seems to be so successful that you never had availability to work with us on moving our reservation. We understood that and moved on.

The next day on the 15th I woke up with extreme chest pain and a sore throat. My brother had already been sick for 2 days and my mom also woke up that day with a terrible migraine, none of us in a state to go snowmobiling. I called you at 8:30 am to let you know that we would NOT be going to the tour and if we could get a refund since we were all sick. I never once asked you to move it to the next day as we knew we were all still going to be sick then, that is why we asked for a refund, not to reschedule. It’s funny that you use the word irate and berated towards me when it was you that hung up on me TWICE, and told me that you hope we never come back to vail. Carrie, you must be the owner of this company because as a small business owner myself (which you mentioned multiple times on our conversation, which I’m sure you did so to try to intimidate me to remove my negative reviews by insinuating you knew of my google profile, really petty of you) I would NEVER be okay having my manager hanging up on my customers, or tell them such rude things as “I hope you never come back to vail” incredibly unprofessional of you. On our call, you said that if we sent you the doctor letters proving that we were sick, you would refund us. I sent you an email with all the doctor letters attached from the vail hospital stating that we all tested positive for flu A and that my sister in law had tore a tendon in her knee, something that was mentioned on our conversation several times and you acknowledged it. You have not replied to my email.

So the only one who was irate, berated us, ridiculous and untruthful...

My partner and I snowmobiled recently and we had a ton of fun. The tour itself is wonderful. We, however, believe that the company has a lot to work on in terms of professionalism. We had a handful of hiccups when trying to communicate with the company that made the experience less enjoyable than we would have hoped:

1. We wish we had a received a great deal more communication from the company leading up to our tour. When I booked on the phone, they mentioned that pick up at our hotel was included and that they would call back to schedule a time. The day before our tour arrived and I still had not heard from them despite having already been charged. I finally called them, after which they informed me that they would have to check if they could pick us up. They then informed me that they could not pick us up at our hotel and instead would pick us up at vail transportation center (which is fine, just dont use hotel pick up as a selling point if you can’t actually do it)

2. the day of our tour finally came, and we were at the pick up point 10 minutes before our scheduled time. After waiting for a while, a company van arrived. When we approached it, the guide in it closed the door as he quickly said “youre not with me” and left. We were left wondering whether they had completely forgotten about us. We tried calling 5 times before someone picked up and informed us that our guide was on the way. They arrived about 15-20 minutes after our scheduled time.

3. before our tour even started, someone approached us to tell us that there is an expected 20% gratuity charge, and asked whether they should put it on our card, BEFORE the tour even began. Thats not how gratuity works and this is, alone, unacceptably unprofessional.

4. one person on our tour was woefully slow, and there seemed to be no protocol to deal with this. As a result, our tour was significantly slowed down, and we spent a great deal of our allotted time waiting for the guide to go get the lagging mobile. While our guide was great, i would have expected for there to be a solution for this besides is just spending around 20% of our two hours parked and waiting.

I think this company has great potential, but there is a great deal of work to be done on the business side of things before they can earn the fee and gratuity that they force upon you.

Response to the business:

While I appreciate the business' response, I feel like this exemplifies some of our concerns very well.

1. While the gratuity is listed on the website, that does not excuse them from demanding it before the tour. Gratuities are meant to be in response to good service. A professional business would pay their workers enough before tips, and not make them dependent on shady tipping practices. It's only a tipping economy if you make it one. If you are going to charge me the gratuity before the service even begins, include it in your fee.

2. Being a small family run business does not excuse you from not providing the service promised in a predictably busy time of year. It also says nothing about not contacting...

Horrible experience!! I would give zero stars if I could. The van arrived late and when we called there would be no answer. The trip was good except the tour guide Paul made the experience miserable. We started off getting the safety review and when one of our family members was translating to the other he was visibly upset and rudely tried to get their attention. We then rode and we had a good time until one of the snowmobiles stoped. Paul and the family member behind him kept going because they hadn’t noticed. In the meantime 2 of our family members went up to the broken snowmobile to see what had happened. Paul returned to us leaving one of our family members alone. The family members that were left alone were freezing and they were very worried. Meanwhile when Paul arrived he became very violent. He yelled at us which scared everyone and he began cussing in front of all of the kids who are not used to that kind of language. He accused us of stopping to take pictures because the kids were playing in the snow and we took pictures while we were waiting. We did take pictures but we did not stop due to that. What did they expect us to do? We were stranded in a freezing mountain which was -2 degrees with kids who were freezing. Paul then noticed that the snowmobile had broken and he began trying to fix it. He was very violent towards the bike and he began kicking it and he tore it apart. It was a very violent act that scared us all. When he tried to apologized to us we were all sick of his passive aggressive behavior and did not forgive him for such a miserable experience. When looking back we realized that he was incredibly bias towards us especially when we were translating to our Spanish speaking family members. We had a very miserable experience and would not recommend having Paul as a tour guide. If you have him I would ask to switch if I were you. I as a teenager have never experienced such harassment from a grown man who know he is in the presence of children. We were all left traumatized from this experience and will not be returning! Hopefully our call gets answered to report Pauls...