Who to escalate a complaint to when your tour is not as described?

[RealtimeY]

Office of Fair Trading sounds right as this is precisely the sort of consumer matter that they investigate. At a minimum, they are a semi-formal escalation path and if unable to negotiate a resolution, they can properly advise you on taking it to tribunal.

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www.qld.gov.au

You can start a chargeback if you want, but I believe those are quite easy to knock back by the merchant given that a tour was provided.

 

[FlyingFiona]

So maybe the next step is an email to the company reminding them of Moore, and that you would welcome the opportunity to reach a resolution. Failing a resolution, you could indicate the next steps will be for you to engage legal representation to take this to court.

Hopefully the first part of the correspondence will be enough to trigger a response. You should also include an exact $$ amount that you are seeking.

You could try a chargeback, but I suspect the company will persuade your CC provider that you took the tour and they had terms and conditions etc etc.

Response from the company (finally) was basically to get lost. They refute that their conduct was misleading. They say they can provide emails that were sent to customers throughout the year (bit odd that we received none of them, and yet we received all other important emails, including the email informing us two days in advance that the first bridge was out requiring a change of itinerary at the start of the trip). They believe the claim to be worth $87 at best, because that's the length of track that was out, and that they have been waiting to defend themselves to the ACCC or Consumer Affairs and look forward to claiming their costs from us.

I'm baffled how a TRAIN tour operator can wonder what our problem is when they replace the train with a truck-bus without informing us at the time of initial or final booking. They say that they delivered us to the final destination and so they delivered as advertised.

 

[Kerrodt]

Response from the company (finally) was basically to get lost. They refute that their conduct was misleading. They say they can provide emails that were sent to customers throughout the year (bit odd that we received none of them, and yet we received all other important emails, including the email informing us two days in advance that the first bridge was out requiring a change of itinerary at the start of the trip). They believe the claim to be worth $87 at best, because that's the length of track that was out, and that they have been waiting to defend themselves to the ACCC or Consumer Affairs and look forward to claiming their costs from us.

I'm baffled how a TRAIN tour operator can wonder what our problem is when they replace the train with a truck-bus without informing us at the time of initial or final booking. They say that they delivered us to the final destination and so they delivered as advertised.

Time to get serious and go hard now after that sort of response.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Response from the company (finally) was basically to get lost. They refute that their conduct was misleading. They say they can provide emails that were sent to customers throughout the year (bit odd that we received none of them, and yet we received all other important emails, including the email informing us two days in advance that the first bridge was out requiring a change of itinerary at the start of the trip). They believe the claim to be worth $87 at best, because that's the length of track that was out, and that they have been waiting to defend themselves to the ACCC or Consumer Affairs and look forward to claiming their costs from us.

I'm baffled how a TRAIN tour operator can wonder what our problem is when they replace the train with a truck-bus without informing us at the time of initial or final booking. They say that they delivered us to the final destination and so they delivered as advertised.

It’s $60 or something to lodge your claim at NCAT/VCAT etc (fees vary slightly). And I think each party pays their own costs (and no lawyers). (But you’ll have to make your own enquiries on that one.)

I think it shows their attitude if they want to bully you with costs