I feel for all those people who are now having to fight to get refunds from Sandra O'Leary for those missed ports. We have had only one experience with her and that was enough for me to say never again. We booked a tour in Iceland with her and got only about a third of the tour time we paid for as well as missing 2 major stops. All 3 tour busses had people with the same complaints, although the severity of the issues varied from bus to bus. She had revised the itinerary prior to the tour as the puffins left Iceland. That is not one of the things we were complaining about as she did give us notice and the opportunity to cancel. We chose to go knowing we would not see puffins. I sent her an email, as did many others, regarding the issues on the tour. She offered some ridiculous small amount for a refund claiming it wasn't her fault it was the tour operators she had hired. I pushed back that 25% refund was not sufficient, since we had only received a third of the tour snd misses to major stops I wanted a 75% refund. She then claimed we only missed 20 minutes. I sent her screenshots of text messages we had all sent at the end of the tour showing we were indeed back way earlier than that. She refuses, actually she just did not reply. I disputed with my card. She gave them the same lies about tour only being short 20 minutes and that one of the things I was upset about was the puffins. Based on her lies they rejected my dispute. She then said she would still offer the small refund if I canceled the dispute. There was nothing for me to cancel as it was already denied by my card. I told her this and to this day, 11 months later I have gotten no response or refund. She is shady and not a competent business woman. She frequently blames issues on tour providers and refuses to take responsibility for the operators she hires to provide the tours she sells. She blames slow response times on the fact that she is on a ship and not able to respond quickly. Well, if you are gonna run a business none of those excuses really work. We saw so many good reviews, mostly in the Facebook group she runs fornher tours. Pretty easy for her to have fake reviews in there and keep out anything negative. She deleted several threads with people that were discussing the issues on our tour and then scolded all of us for posting it on Facebook. Had she responded timely or taken care of these issues timely maybe there would have been fewer discussions about it. Beware of booking with her. What she sells you isn't always what you get and she picks and chooses when she makes it right with her customers and when she just washes her hands of the issue with lies and revisions to her website and terms. Spend a little more and book with a real, registered, licensed tour guide company.
