Pollman's Tours and Safaris

Untrustworthy

We had been really excited to be going to Kenya, booked through a reputable UK holiday company.
Sadly from the start of our holiday things did not go right.
Having arrived at our hotel in Nairobi we discovered that a room had not been reserved for our first night there.
It was resolved and we could have accepted the fact that mistakes happen, however when it came to leaving along with many other tourists, who were all boarding various vehicles, it was so disorganized, first being told vehicle no: *, then another vehicle no, then changed again. When we got outside with our bags we were shown to one vehicle, then told it was another, then told yet again it was another.
This was how things started out and yes they did get better but they also got a lot worse, when we were asked by the driver to pay an extra $30 each to go on a visit to a Masai village, which was part of an afternoon safari. We pointed out that it was included on our paperwork and even showed the driver there and then. We wanted to do the safari but were not interested in the visiting the village (as I have worked in Africa many times and been to places like this previously). We were then told $20 each and that we could not go on the afternoon safari without visiting the village. So we were dropped off back at the Zebra Plains Mara lodge. We immediately contacted our travel agent. The following day all the other guests who had paid for the visit to the village were told they would be refunded their $30 each. We received an apology from the lead driver and a bottle of wine, (which sounds good), but the reality was we'd paid for an afternoon safari for that day, as part of our holiday package and never received it. A single day safari costs a lot more than 1 bottle of wine! We were told by the lead driver that we would be refunded for the afternoon missed but have never received that refund. The whole point of going on a holiday like that is to be able to see the animals. 1 day missed to us, was 1 day missed where perhaps we may have seen a Leopard perhaps!! What happened in regard to the driver wanting to charge us extra was to us, an attempt to get extra money from the tourists, with our driver being directed by someone else, therefore I would warn anybody thinking about booking through this company to think again and look elsewhere. I would not be writing this had we been refunded properly. There were other issues also which we haven't mentioned here and we did tell all this to the Pollman's rep, (Timothy), at the end of our holiday at the Pinewood resort, who said he would email the Nairobi office.