Feedback on "Sicily Life" or any other Taormina guide needed

[Bob7]

Does anyone have a website for this company?

Thanks!

Here's the link, this will be a surprise:

http://www.sicilylife.com

 

I emailed Sebastiano to confirm my tour on June 20th and I also asked if he will be our driver. He said one of his partners will be our driver and be much better than him. I not only told him my concern, but emailed him a cut & paste of the unfavorable post, so he can understand my concerns. I still plan to use his services and I will report back when I return.

Dorothy that's great, we'll be waiting to hear from you, we're booked mid July. And let us know if Sebastiano replies to your email containing the problem post.

-Bob

[Buzzie402`]

I was also on the May 19th sailing of the Med. with luv2run and I also used Sicily Life. I spoke to Sebastiano for almost one year and he planned a great tour but unfortunately it did not turn out well. My husband had to call Sicily Life when we were on the dock to ask if the drivers had left. They arrived very late and our driver Maurizio did not speak one word of English. We hired a guide who left us to our own devices. If all I wanted was a driver I would have hired someone else. We went to Mount Etna and the Greek Theatre and also to Taormina. My husband and I are both Italian but Maurizio did not seem to understand my husband or he just ignored anything we had to say. Needless to say my cousin who was also on the same cruise used Sicily Tours and had a great tour with an English Speaking guide. Unfortunately if anyone uses Sicily Life they will be in for a big disappointment with their tour. Sebastiano emailed me and asked what he could do to make me happy. I emailed Sebastiano went I got to Rome since I was there for one week after the cruise. I believe I am the only one he responded to. I feel his rate was high considering we hired a guide and not just a driver. I will deal with Sebastiano on behalf of my group as I felt very bad for everyone. It was the worst tour of our trip. I cannot blame Maurizio but Sebastiano should have sent an English guide. Previous reviews for Sicily Life were great but this May 19/06 something changed. I believe Sebastiano has someone who is English sending emails to people because when he emailed me himself his English was so so. It is Sicily Tours that does the Godfather tour, winery tour etc. I would suggest that if you have booked with Sicily Life to change and go with Sicily Tours. We were suppose to do the winery tour but we did not get to go. Use caution!!!:(

[CAC104]

Can someone please list the e-mail or webpage for Sicily Tours. I will be on a cruise going there in Oct. Also, where do you go on the boards to find reviews of the tour guides and companies?

[Dorothy]

I sent Sebastiano the email yesterday with the bad review. I have not heard back from him with any response. I emailed him just now and cancelled my tour, so I will not be going on the tour June 20, 2006. I emailed him the other persons bad review too. I told him for the money I was spending, I simply could not take the chance of getting a non english speaking guide and have a bad time. That is not how I want to start the beginning of my vacation. So I have told him to cancel us.

 

I think we will just end up hopping on a train to Taormina or see what NCL has.

 

If I hear back from him with any other response other than a confirmation for my cancellation, I will let you all know.

[CAC104]

I would think that if people start canceling tours and send this gentleman the bad reviews he will take note and probably try to change things...

 

Meanwhile, could someone please give the link to the Sicily City tour site?

[cawhite]

Hi CAC104 - FYI: I heard Sicily Tours only has an email address (no website), but I don't have it as I never contacted them.

 

I agree, I'm sure Sicily Life will make sure things are great for their next customers, given the reviews here!

 

Carole

[JPH814]

Sue Z: I am on the July 18th sailing of the Liberty, have contacted Sebastiano and have Sicily life booked for the day in sicily for 3 couples. I will be very interested in hearing of your experience when you return.

 

If anyone else gets feedback from Sebastiano, please post it.

 

Thank you all for your information and - assuming I go through with the tour with him - I will post my experience as soon as I return.

 

Joe

[CAC104]

I will not be stopping in Messina until Oct. 29th, so I hope those who do use Sicily Life will post about their experiences this summer.

[Bob7]

Hi Jetercab:

We have booked a tour with Sicily Life for our June 12 Carnival Liberty cruise.

Will post review upon returning home.

Cio

Sue Z.

Hi Sue Z, you're the only one left using Sicily Life in June, so all us later cruisers will love to hear from you. If you want a great tour tell them a bunch of people are waiting to either confirm or cancel based on your day :-)

Bon Voyage!

-Bob

[Dorothy]

I have sent another email asking for confirmation on my cancellation and have not heard back. Sebastiano is not making any points with me. He should have immediately responded, but it is 2 days later and I'm still waiting. His policy is 2 days notice before departure for no penalty.

[Dorothy]

Okay, after 3 days, I have not heard back from Sebastiano, so I just wrote him this email:

 

 

Subject: 3rd Request for confirmation of cancellation

To: "Sicily Life" <info@sicilylife.com>

 

Dear Sebastiano,

 

This is my third request in 3 days for confirmation of my cancelled tour. I am very disappointed that you neglect to respond to me. Your negative response does not help your situation. Had you responded originally and perhaps tried to assure me that the unsatisfactory reviews I sent to you would not happen to us, this may have had a different turn out.

 

However, due to your lack of response, I will be notifying the message board of our unfavorable outcome and I will alert my credit card company not to allow a debit through from your company. I have our previous correspondence documented and have given you plently of notice for cancellation, so as not to incur a penalty. It truly is a shame that you chose to ignore my request, because you will probably lose more business because of the way you conduct business.

 

This will be my last notice to you that I do not plan to attend the tour originally scheduled for next week and I would still like confirmation that you have cancelled on my behalf.

 

Sincerely,

[Bob7]

Dorothy thx for keeping us so well informed. Jeez tour operators are just like insurance companies, you never know if they're any good until you have a problem :-( He gave us the same cancellation policy, no charge if 2 days or more.

Are you looking for another tour? ... we got good replies from Sicily Travel, a bit more money than Sicily Life.

Hoping SueZCruise comes back from her trip after this week with some news about Sicily Life, brave of her to stay with them.

-Bob

[JeterCab]

Dorothy, thanks for letting everyone know what is going on. I guess many of us are now figuring out our options. Bob, I also received info. from Sicily Travel. They answered all of my questions in detail. I actually thought they were Sicily Tours when I first contacted them. Did you find any reviews on either of them? If so, could you please send me links. I am also anxious to hear back from SueZCruise. Hopefully she'll have an excellent day with them!

 

Does anyone have the email or website for Sicily Tours? I feel like I've surfed the entire web looking for it! Thanks!

[Cruisingonceagain]

Dorothy, thanks for letting everyone know what is going on. I guess many of us are now figuring out our options. Bob, I also received info. from Sicily Travel. They answered all of my questions in detail. I actually thought they were Sicily Tours when I first contacted them. Did you find any reviews on either of them? If so, could you please send me links. I am also anxious to hear back from SueZCruise. Hopefully she'll have an excellent day with them!

 

Does anyone have the email or website for Sicily Tours? I feel like I've surfed the entire web looking for it! Thanks!

 

Here's the response I got asking for the contact information for Sicily Tours. This is message no. 913 from the May 19 Carnival Liberty Roll Call:

 

"Here's the email address for Sicily Tours: dkenning@sicilyonline.it

Our guide's name was Douglas Kenning (American moved to Italy). There prices were pretty good. We were a large group (12 people), so we actually had a driver and a guide and rented a 15 seater van, so our price was more because of that. Here's the pricing we paid: The price will be 195E for the guide + 250E for the 15 seat van + 100E for the driver + + lunch for

the driver and guide at the winery (approx 50E). That's a total of approximately 600E. That ended up being 50E each - which I thought was pretty good.

__________________

trbasso"

 

I emailed Douglas and he responded soon after. We, too, are booked with Sicily Life for the June 24 sailing, and we have opted to stay with them. They have responded to emails regarding our concerns, and reassured us. We'll post back.

[Dorothy]

Well, it is too late for me to make other arrangements as we are leaving today. However, I am not concerned. I understand there are taxis at the boat docks and we will just take one of those to Taormina. (Or we may take a train)

 

I hope that others will read the posts here and take the warning sooner and find a different company to do business with. I think that if he had at least responded and assured me that he would make every effort to show us a good time and put us with an English speaking driver, we would have taken his tour. But, his silence has showed me his poor business sense and I hope that others will take notice.

 

When I get back, I will let you all know how things went in the ports. I have guides scheduled for Naples, Rome and Florence. I plan to wing it in Nice (I speak, read and write the language). But, I figure my experiences in each port will help others decided what to do.

 

Chat with you all in a couple weeks!!

[JPH814]

I emailed Douglas and he responded soon after. We, too, are booked with Sicily Life for the June 24 sailing, and we have opted to stay with them. They have responded to emails regarding our concerns, and reassured us. We'll post back.

 

Cruisingonceagain:

 

Just to clarify...you said that you recievd assurances from Sebastiano at Sicily Life? May I ask you to tell us what he said?

 

We leave July 16 and have SL booked for July 25 so I would be very anxious to hear of your experience as soon as you return (I am sure the first thing you will do when you return from a 2 week cruise is log on to write me :)...but if you put it near the top of you lost I would appreciate it.

Choirmast@aol.com)

[Cruisingonceagain]

Joe,

 

We were assured that our driver would either be Sebastiano himself or Allesandro, his partner, since we booked nearly a year ago.

 

I promise I will post when we get back.

[Dorothy]

I hope things go well for you. I booked several months ago with Sebastiano and when I recently emailed to confirm if he was going to be our driver, he said no, one of his partners, but they are better than him.

 

I don't know. I got a bad feeling about the whole thing, which is why I backed out. If he had at least emailed me back, when I gave him my concerns after I emailed him the bad reviews, I might have stayed with him. But since he pretty much just turned off and ignored me from that point on, I can't get over his business practices. I'd rather wing it than spend a lot of money and regret my choice.

[Bob7]

However, I am not concerned. I understand there are taxis at the boat docks and we will just take one of those to Taormina.

Dorothy, can't blame you for bailing. We read that there is a taxi supervisor at the dock who gets you the vehicle/driver who will do the tour you want, and it's about 140E for Taormina, 6 ppl I think, very cheap. If you meet ppl on board who used Sicily Life please let us know how it went. Bon Voyage, you must be almost out the door!

 

Bob, I also received info. from Sicily Travel. They answered all of my questions in detail.

Yes we also got a nice reply from Sicily Travel, from Prof. Michele Gallo, quoted 340E for a van/driver taking 8 people. Jeez ya don't suppose she'd make us take a test at the end do ya? :-)

 

We, too, are booked with Sicily Life for the June 24 sailing, and we have opted to stay with them. They have responded to emails regarding our concerns, and reassured us. We'll post back.(snip)

We were assured that our driver would either be Sebastiano himself or Allesandro, his partner, since we booked nearly a year ago.

I promise I will post when we get back.

Great, thx! We'll all be waiting.

-Bob

[MarGra]

Yes we also got a nice reply from Sicily Travel, from Prof. Michele Gallo, quoted 340E for a van/driver taking 8 people. Jeez ya don't suppose she'd make us take a test at the end do ya? :-)

 

Did Prof. Michele Gallo give you the name of your driver. She gave me the name of our driver who is Sebastiano Ricaglia 8 psgr. van for a tour to Etna/Taormina at 350E for our 9/4 cruise. I too originally booked with Sicily Life but cancelled when I found out they only have 3 vehicles and outsource:eek: all the rest at varying prices from 390E to 850E <high end my price>. I'll be interested in knowing who your driver is and any comments you have on your return.

[Bob7]

Did Prof. Michele Gallo give you the name of your driver. She gave me the name of our driver who is Sebastiano Ricaglia 8 psgr. van for a tour to Etna/Taormina at 350E for our 9/4 cruise. I too originally booked with Sicily Life but cancelled when I found out they only have 3 vehicles and outsource:eek: all the rest at varying prices from 390E to 850E <high end my price>. I'll be interested in knowing who your driver is and any comments you have on your return.

We got the quote of 340E/8 ppl from Michele at Sicily Travel but did not book with her yet, we're still booked with Sicily Life (until we hear back from cruisers using them later this month). We go July 16. Michele said we'd have an English speaking driver if we booked but did not give a name. The price did not include a guide, we didn't need one for Taormina. We did not ask for any other stops to be included, just Taormina.

Well at least you've got lots of time to figure this all out before you go in Sept.

-Bob

[ama22]

Is there a web site for Sicily Tours?

[Cruisingonceagain]

Is there a web site for Sicily Tours?

 

No, only an email address: dkenning@sicilyonline.it

[Buzzie402`]

I sent Sebastiano the same email that I posted on the boards except for what I expected in return from him since he asked what he could do to make me happy. I have not heard from him at all. I think he is being very unprofessional and again I suggest caution if you are planning on using him as your tour guide or his drivers. Hopefully things might change since he is getting such terrible reviews and that everyone is going to have a wonderful time in Europe. It's a wonderful cruise and the ports of call are all great.

[daiseee]

Hello...

 

one more person's feedback on this. I just returned from the Carnival Liberty 5/31 sailing and we had a tour booked through Sebastiano at Sicily Life. First off, our driver was late, but eventually showed up (about 25 minutes late.) Sebastiano had confirmed that we would have an "English speaking driver/guide will introduce you our Country and make sure your day trip will be memorable !" The first thing he said to us when he picked us up was 'My English no good' So needless to say, he was not an 'English speaking guide' and most of the time we did not know what we were seeing or what it's significance was. He also drove like a maniac and more than once we asked him to please slow down. We opted for the 30 Euro per person traditional sicilian lunch and it was not worth it.

 

I'm sure others have had different experiences but that was ours. Just wanted to share so that you all could make the best choices and know what questions to ask. BTW, our driver's name was Giuseppe, and we took the 'Godfather tour.'