Big Bus Tours London Reviews 

Booked Big Bus Tours 2 day pass in January for myself, my husband and 2 children I also booked the Night tour at the same time. We have travelled over from N.I. to receive a message this morning saying that 18 of the stops have been removed from the route and that the night tour has been cancelled. When I contacted them asking for a refund they said that they have a non refund policy. When I pointed out that this was in fact their error as there was no way they didn't know that the big bike ride was happening before this morning and that their policy states that a full refund will be issued if 24 hours notice was given and that I wasnt given 24 hours they forwarded my request onto the refunds team and that I would receive an answer in 7 to 14 days! I think this is absolutely disgraceful and now have to try and work out what transport we can us last minute, not to mention I have to try and find the money to do so. Absolutely appalling costumer service!

Very underwhelming experience that lacked any real insight. No live audio from a guide and the auto-service you listen to via headphones was mostly music. As a Londoner I was hoping for more. Avoid if you live here or visiting.

I was today almost run over by one of your drivers at approximately 5.25 pm 18/3/22 on Kensington High St. I believed that the driver, who had a bus full of passengers was probably looking down at a mobile phone. It transpired that he was actually looking down at a book when he moved forward without looking and almost ran me over. He then went on to sound his horn and abuse me when I remonstrated with him. Please do not board a bus with the reg SN12 APU. You will be taking your life in your hands. I will be taking this matter further as I have photos of the driver and the bus.

what a great day in London, wonderful commentary from free headphones, got to see all of the sites ,plus hopped on and off few times, the traffic in London is still terrible so do not expect to not have to wait for a few minutes past schedule, all staff were spot on with us , ignore bad reviews ,great service, thankyou BIG BUS

I’ve cancelled my ticket from another tour bus operator to go with Big Bus Tour because they offer an app with live timetable. But what a surprise when I realised that the timetable wasn’t available on the app! So I went to the bus stop hoping to find information about the next bus : nothing. I’ve then decided to be in contact wit BBT by chat: the nice lady said there is no live at the moment on the app. She said the blue route is operating every 60mn with 1st bus at 8.27am. I arrived at 10.10am and stayed there until 11am. No bus at all. So I asked for a refund because if you can’t know when is the next bus, you don’t want to waste your time waiting at the stop…… right? But the lady said they don’t offer refund. instead, she extended my ticket for 12 months. Hope next time the app will work fine! Thanks to the nice person I was talking to, but I would never recommend this company. No live timetable, no refund, no buses: it is a BIG NO for me. I am a tour operator and I was there to have a look if I will advice clients to use this company… definitely not

Awful customer service. Forced to cancel our trip because of a bereavement but hit a brick wall when trying to speak with their Customer Care Team about a refund.
The Big Bus Tours website doesn't mention anywhere that tickets are non-refundable. The only thing it mentions (in section 1.13) is that they will give a refund if they are unable to offer a service. But that's it. It doesn't offer any stipulation on refunds in other circumstances. It doesn't say that tickets are non-refundable. I might not have bought the tickets if their Terms and Conditions had made that clear. But try telling that to their Customer Care team who simply repeat again and again that you can only extend the validity of your ticket.
They don't seem to appreciate that the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 requires traders to provide details of any right to cancel. A strong case for pre-action protocol, in my opinion, and I'll be considering my position.
Awful company. Deeply regret buying with them. Would strongly advise people to book with someone else.

UPDATE - Further to my earlier review I can advise that I was eventually successful in obtaining a refund.

Waiting time for the blue line was 45 min (advertised 15-20)
Poor guiding comments, for the most part continuous loop 8 songs about London.
Very expensive for the value the tour offers.
If you want to give it a try, do it in warmer weather because sitting on windy top for 2.5h is tough (you won't see much from inside)

Went on the Halloween special bus trip on Sat, 30th October 2021 with Big Steve telling us spooky stories!! We had a fabulous time!! The lady who boarded us was excellent, the driver was pleasant and polite then storyteller Steve was amazing!! Full of interesting facts of London's dark secrets. 6 of us in our party, all adults, we had a great time. Thank you Big Bus Tours!!

I have had the worst experience of my lifetime. Iam on a short visit in London from Aberdeen along with my wife and 2 small kids 4&7, we got the tickets for big bus+London eye+madam Tussaud etc. The incident happened today, 14th OCT 2021 evening - the time was at 1900 in the London eye big bus stop wherein bus stopped and with my family we were ready to get in, but then the driver looked at us, started showing some face expressions and waived his hands on us and moved away. Is he a racist? I don’t understand what is wrong with him!
It was cold weather and me and wife carrying our kids as they were already tired! At least to show some courtesy and being human, he could have opened the door and tell us what’s going on as he already stopped the bus. I have took the pics of the station to ensure I was on the right bus stop. I spent money out of my pocket to purchase the tickets and now me and my family being just ignored? Is this right? My question is to the management of BigBus..is this the right way? Is this something to do with my skin color? My phone number is 07731552553

DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY! I visit London a lot and this was a special trip for my first family meeting since the pandemic began. This is a serious waste of money....you don't see anything....you cannot hear anything bar music on the earphones and it would be better to walk! Never again!

Greedy company with a really poor customer service! I was traveling with my family in Europe and due to Covid-19 we couldn't make it to London and use our tickets. Nowadays every decent and responsible company tries to help their customers but this greedy company would not refund our money even though they didn't incur in any expenses. We had to get out money back through our credit card company. Do NOT do business with them!

Bought two tickets from Sealife.....
Expected to be given a running commentary from the plug in earphones, as really wanted to know about the history etc., and the passing attractions.

There were none!!!!!
We plugged in and got irritating music.
Asked the old lady driver who just shrugged her shoulders.

We did notice that the ticket got us on to a river cruise for free.
The live commentary was much better, informative and very funny.
Could have missed it, as not mentioned to us when tickets bought.

No tickets until contacted
No confirmation email
No contact number
Delay on live chat
Eventually resolved

Hi
My name is Jose Kuriakose from Birmingham and we had a very good experience with the tour. I want to specially thank your employee Ashly from London Eye area, who was very helpful for us. Ready to listen, clarify and give proper guidance. People like him will be a great asset for your company

Charged us twice

Charged us twice, and then impossible to contact for a refund; no phone, no response from live chat, and then they responded weeks later after I had been forced to start a chargeback with my bank.
We were walk up customers. The person taking payment said the first payment didn't go through, and insisted on another payment. Surprise, surprise, we get home and find two payments have been taken. You then try to contact the company and its impossible, no phone numbers they will answer, had to search hard on the internet to find an email address. Avoid this company!

Bought 2 tickets in advance, waited for over an hour for a bus at their designated bus stop and no buses!!

Waste of money! Is it a scam??

Not enough busses, 45min+ wait between (on a good day)
You’d be better taking a regular London bus, won’t feel like you’ve been robbed that way - I never got a tour and no possibility of a refund.

This is the worst hop on hop off bus we have ever been on. It was nearly impossible to locate the stops and one bus actually drove right past us and a group of other people. It was awful. We were waiting a lot longer than 20 minutes and the routes were not great, the commentary not helping us to know where to get off to see which attraction. This was the first time bringing my children to London and we were bitterly disappointed.

Overpriced. The staff were mostly completely unhelpful and clearly not engaged.

Advertised Polish language on the front of the bus but when we got in, this (along with most other language options) was not available in the tour guide.

The app was barely functional, and the customer service afterwards has been appalling when I mentioned the language issue. Absolute failure to understand that service was not up to scratch.

Really do not recommend.

While we were waiting for one of the buses (which did not follow the advertised routes and were therefore hard to predict), we got talking to one of the staff of Tootbus who was exactly as helpful and friendly as the Big Bus people were not. My reading on it was that Big Bus clearly do not value their employees and as such their employees could not care less about the job they are doing (I don't blame the employees for this).

I would seriously advise checking them out (actually any other company) over this

I took this tour with family a few years ago and have been meaning to write a review because it was the most awful and stressful experience. I also went with family - my mum and her sisters and my brother.
I'd been looking for a bus tour around London for my family and was going to go with another company but saw it had bad reviews and decided on Big Bus. We went for the day and unfortunately a lot of the routes were closed because of protests happening, which obviously isn't Big Bus' fault but this did make it incredibly confusing as to which routes were available at what times and which way each bus route was going.
The things that pissed me off most was stopping at Big Ben and trying to ask staff what was happening exactly with the next routes, the Big Bus staff just didn't care in the slightest and the staff for the other companies were more helpful, which is ridiculous. My family decided at the last minute they wanted to go to Madame Tussaud so I went onto the Big Bus app and ordered tickets from there while on the tour. This made things so much more complicated because I had to then find an internet cafe to print it off first and to find this out I asked several staff members who were incredibly RUDE and unhelpful. One staff member asked how much I paid for it and all he could say was "I could have gotten you a discount if you had bought it through me" and then he buggered off - I don't need your damn comments I needed help and if someone is going for a tour and has never used your company before then how are they supposed to know these things? All the staff members care about is getting their commissions and selling new tickets and why would buying tickets through the company's app be so much more expensive than buying from the staff member from the same company?! Once you've got your tickets they simply don't care about helping you anymore. I then did a live chat to complain, they said I would get a refund for the madame tussaud tickets but it never happened.

This was such an awful day, awful people, I do not recommend this company in any way. AVOID them like the plague. Worst experience I've ever had.