Big Bus Tours London Reviews 11,160

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.

Terrible experience, booked for all day attractions. Not one place excepted them had to pay again for entry. No guided tour just a bus ride where u had no idea where u were what stop or any history of the buildings just terrible music . Drivers weren't any help either especially with their language barriers. Website and flyers are extremely misleading #ripofbritain. Don't waste your money

Awful rude staff, long wait times. It seems like they sell more tickets than they can fit seated in the buses. They do not guarantee seats in their terms.

Five stars to Phil who was the best part of our Big Bus experience when we were trying to return to our hotel at the end of the day.
He was cheerful under duress. It was raining, the buses were late /non existent and he cheerfully chatted to frustrated members of the waiting public, even lending our group his umbrella.
He sporadically entertained the children with the Big Bus app........spot the bus........where's the bus!
1 star to the company who, on the day, charged us full price for my wheelchair bound, blind husband after we had purchased a family ticket online.
Boat trip was good but staff made it abundantly clear they expected a tip at the end of the trip.
Would not recommend this company, choose any other.

Had a wonderful tour on Saturday 31 July. Tiffany was our guide - she made the tour really interesting. Would definitely recommend this tour. The river trip was also excellent.

I went with my family to get on the bus from 1st planned stopped ,after 20 minutes a man from staff told us that it will come to this stop and we need to go to another stop which was very far ,needed to walk for 25 minutes.
He cut us the paper ticket which affected our usage time for the ticket which should be for 24 hours and if he didn’t do it so early before getting On the bus this would enable us to use the ticket for longer next day. The app is useless as doesn’t show any buses nearby or active stops around you.
I tried to contact the team next day but no reply on chats.
Not good experience .

Had two wonderful people from The Big Bus Tour help me and my family out with the tickets, as I had delayed problems my end with connection from my phone. I had already purchased the tickets and discussed my small issue with the gentleman (Ashley and lady, Fernander), at the Westminster bridge site located there. They let me an my family on and explained that everything would be fine. They even explained that we could go on the night bus as well and also the boat ride, very helpful and would definitely recommend others to purchase with The Big Bus Tour Company. Thank you so much for your patience and experience. Wonderful people.

Having had the company mess up my booking twice without informing me I was told I would have to wait up to 15 days for my refund. They then had the audacity to ask me to pay again to rebook while still waiting for a refund of over £130 for 2 people. The customer service is shocking. Avoid this shocking company like the plague.
Jesus, 2 months nearly to reply to this. I got my money back in the end after lodging an appeal with PayPal. Big Bus Tours stopped even replying to the messages I sent them. It wasn't a double charge you just messed up twice, then wanted me to pay again whilst waiting for a refund. Shocking.