my blog Oscar Peralta

Recently me and a group of friends went to Mount Kinabalu (all of my photos coming soon).

It was overall a good trip, but sadly, we booked through an awful tour company called X-Trekkers. These guys are amazing.. in a bad way. I think I ranted enough already during and after the trip. The truth is that I am not surprised since it is really hard to find good customer service anywhere you go in Singapore. My theory is that a lot of customers are used to it and they don't even complain so this kind of businesses are still floating around and bumping into people like me and probably you if you live in Singapore.

After our trip to Mount Kinabalu in Sabah we were sent a feedback form from the tour company. Without expecting too much in return we sent it and...well.. it had made it to my blog. When you think they can't possibly make things worse, well.. then there are things like this.

It is a long read but if you have the time, enjoy and remember 5.0%!


Their email asking for feedback:
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Hello Friends,

Hope you've had a good trip and enjoyed it too.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for joining our trip and for allowing us to serve you. Do help us to improve by having 5 minutes of your time to fill up the feedback form or just email back the best time that I can call you. I would love to see how we have performed in our service during the expedition.

Once again, we thank you for arranging your adventure holiday to India [editors note: you read right, India!] with us and hope to be of service to you and your friends in the near future.

Cheers,
Adventure in harmony with nature,

Our Feedback
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Hello Alpa,

We had a good trip, and we attach the feedback form. Unfortunately the good things were not really related to the service that you have provided. Make no mistake that what we will point out has nothing to do with 'expected luxury' since we fully understand that this is an outdoor experience which is normally physically tough, rough and simple.

Here is some feedback which hopefully helps you to improve.

THE GOOD
Both expedition partners are good.

- Jimmy and his staff at City Park Lodge were great. He helped us all the time and did his best to make our trip enjoyable. He also took the initiative to arrange for beds and pay for us first at Sutera Lodge when they could not locate our booking as the booking ID was not provided to any of us.

- Via Ferrata is excellent. The first part (Low's Peak) is great. The (beginners) easy part, i.e. Walk the Torq not so much. We would never recommend to do that beginners part only. It could be boring at times and quite tiring after both climbs. Staff were really helpful and they knew what they were doing.

THE BAD

Drivers for Pick up - Drop Off

- Both drivers didn't know their way in Singapore. At first they said they knew the way until they both got lost. Last one got lost at Boon Lay at 1am. In both cases we had to direct them. It is really easy to plan a route using Street Directory in Singapore. Specially if you know the pick up points a week before. The drop took one more hour.

- Jimmy's driver which was waiting for us with an X-Trekker sign at KK airport but the drop off driver just parked somewhere and waited for us to look for him at Sinai airport completely uninterested.

- Given we couldn't afford to miss the flight from Senai to Kota Kinabalu, having a driver who did not know his way around the island added unnecessarily stress and wasted a lot of time. We spent 1.5hours just going around Singapore as the driver did not know his way and would have easily missed the plane, had the driver not speed up to 130 km/h in Malaysia.

ID Confirmation
- Upon our arrival to the accommodation at Mesilau Nature Reserve, we were asked for our ID confirmation number. This was never given to us. Neither Charmaine or me had that info in our emails. We mentioned that we were the X-Trekkers group but that wasn't enough. It took quite a long time for them to be able to check us in with the uncertainty of what was included and what not. The hotline that you have provided us was not working neither the other contact numbers that you have provided.

Timing
The schedule that we had was quite tight. Only 4 of us were able to make our way down on Saturday after Via Ferrata. We even had a last 1km dark trekking. The rest, 5 people, after 14 hrs of intense physical exercise, bad food, and 4 hrs sleep could not handle 4 more hours going down. I would guess that maybe 10% to 5% of the people that you would ever offer the tour will be able to handle an 18 hr hike under these conditions.
I think people will enjoy it more with a bit more time. In our case, more than half of the people had to rest one more night after doing Via Ferrata. The cost was around 110 Singapore Dollars and an unused night down at the City Lodge.

Price
Considering the price that we have paid we can't justify it against the service we had experienced. At the very least we should have had all the logistics solved by your staff at every stage. To be honest we could have made the trip on our own for a fraction of the cost (like a lot of people did) with the same if not better results. We think that the money that we have paid should include everything, including food at the mountain plus a good service. There is simply no justification to charge that much for making some bookings.

I hope this helps to improve your expeditions. To be honest I would not recommend going with you to anyone specially because the price is far away from the service provided. If you can raise your bar up to Jimmy's or the Ferrata guys, it would make way more sense.

Once again, we hope this feedback helps in taking some good steps to a better service and we look forward to hearing from X-Trekkers on your next steps to address the issues raised in our feedback.

Sincerely,
Oscar, Charmaine

PS We went to Mount Kinabalu and not India.

Their Amazing Reponse
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Dear us customers

Thank you for your honest feedback. Your acknowledgement of our partners are good is a testimonial of our selection process. With our credible standing here in Singapore, City Park has remained our faithful partners for many years Mountain Torq, through their own background research, has also appointed us as one of their representative here Nevertheless, we appreciate your comments and offer our sincere apologies for the problems you and your friends had to face during the Mt Kinabalu trip.

We would like to address THE BAD concerns right away and re-assure you that based on your feedback, we are taking positive steps to mitigate the issues raised by you.

First and foremost, we have identified and will recommend drivers (Singaporeans) who are knowledgeable about the local roads so that our next batch of clients do not have to waste time during their conveyance. (reason why we cannot state “we use” – these drivers ought to be tourist-licensed but they are not)

Next, we shall ensure that service vouchers are provided to all our participants so that the

checking-in at the accommodations will be simpler and faster.

We are surprised that you couldn’t reach us as all our phone lines were in order and our phones switched on. In any case, we have had our phones checked as we strive to ensure that we’re available at all times to attend to our clients who are taking our expeditions.

On the timing front, we believe that with reasonable fitness and adequate training, it is possible to cover the trek comfortably and in good time. This is evident by our second group who arrived last week; they made the ascent and the descent (Low Peak Circuit) within the scheduled time.

Finally, we would like to clarify that our price is not just for making the bookings but includes the entire range of services from planning the itinerary to organizing the schedule and transport, making timely reservations and arranging services of various intermediaries so that our trekkers are spared the hassle of going through the entire rigmarole.

In appreciation of your constructive feedback, we would like to offer you an ex gratia concession of 5.0% on your next trip with X-Trekkers.

Cheers,

Adventure in harmony with nature,
The Amazing Company