*Please do not do a Cosmos Tour!* My husband and I have been home about 2 1/2 weeks from our tour with Cosmos. These trips are expensive. I booked with Cosmos mainly because they said that they have headsets. I assumed that that meant on the bus too. It did not. My husband, like many older people that take these tours have had their hearing lessened by their age or for other reasons. My husband could not hear ANYTHING that our tour guide said on the entire 4,000 KM bus tour....nothing about each country or city we were going to visit, nothing about the attractions that we were currently passing and none of the instructions she would give us as far as public transportation, restaurants, shopping, etc. Whenever we'd go on walking tours around the cities, he could hear perfectly well with the headset he was using. We talked to our tour guide TWICE, asking her if she could possibly rubber band the headset microphone together with the bus microphone, which would have taken her less than a minute to do, but she wouldn't even TRY it! All I can do is base this all on what I would do if I were the tour guide. Even though it was only ONE person that had this problem, I would have gone out of my way to find a solution so that he could enjoy the trip he had paid for. I'm sure there would have been others on our trip that would have benefited by this "solution" too, but she didn't even ask if everyone could hear after we brought this to her attention. Go with a different company that CARES about their clients!!
Posted by
Northamptonshire, England
33994 posts
That's sad to hear marf.
I bet that the guide on a Rick Steves tour would have tried to help somehow.
Didn't anybody try moving your husband to the front row of the bus so that he could hear by being next to the guide?
Posted by
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
8293 posts
My husband was the total opposite. He could hear perfectly well but could not stand the tour leader droning on all the time, usually reading from a guide book and sometimes with an impenetrable accent.
Has your husband thought about having some kind of hearing aid? They are not perfect and not every person with hearing problems can benefit, but lots do. It is good that you could be his ears.
By the way, I disagree that Cosmos tours are expensive. Compared to other companies they are reasonably priced.
Posted by
Washington DC Region, USA
7054 posts
I think you really should be contacting Cosmos management in writing and relating your concerns to them, particularly the lack of help you received to your two requests from the guide (assuming she or he could in fact help with a technology issue). This is a site of a competing travel company - RS. Trip Advisor and perhaps Yelp are more appropriate forums for reviewing other tour companies.
Posted by
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
8293 posts
Keith, the post you linked to was kind of discredited because it seemed to slam Trafalgar in order to promote another company, the name of which has been deleted by the webmaster.
Posted by
Corvallis OR
7168 posts
I'm sorry you had a bad experience. However, slamming a tour company (any tour co) because of one experience is a little short-sighted. Something on the order of the OP who says Rome is a horrible city because he got pick-pocketed. I've never been on a Cosmos tour but I have taken a few Globus tours (their parent company) and was very satisfied with the experience - they are good as far as large bus tours go. Cosmos may seem expensive to someone on a very strict travel budget but they are actually near the very low end budget wise for tours in general. As another poster mentioned, If you feel that the company doesn't care about their clients then you need to complain to them and post your reviews where they will do the most good.