This is my letter to the City Government of Melbourne.

Hello,
We both are international students studying in Sydney and wanted to enjoy our holidays in Melbourne for 6 days. The trip was great as we saw many beautiful and interesting touristy sites. Unfortunately, there was an unpleasant incident during our stay in Melbourne which should not have occurred.
We booked three travel packages through the Information Centre located in the Federation Square on 27/6/2006. We were informed of the time (8:15 am.) and venues (Friendly BackPacker on King Street and Little Burke) to be picked up. Of course, we fully paid in cash during the time we booked and got very excited to go on the excursions. The first and third trips went well, but the second trip (on 29/6/06) did not because neither a bus nor a tour guide showed up at the venue and the time we were informed. As a matter of fact, we were right there 10 minutes before the pick-up time. Fortunately, we have a considerate and responsible eyewitness from Fee, an employee at Melbourne Connection Hostel where we stayed during our first three nights. Fee was on duty that morning and checked us out around 8:05. Right afterward we went across the street to wait for the tour bus.
We waited until 8:45 and started to get nervous because the tour bus delayed. One of us went back to the Melbourne Connection and asked Fee for help, so she made a phone call to APT (Australia Pacific Tour) to find out what went wrong. The outcome turned to be awkward and rather ridiculous (we have to say). APT claims to be the best travel agency in Melbourne, but its professional responsibility for customers did not reveal to us. They said it was our fault not to be there on time; the bus driver drove around the block twice. Therefore, they could not do anything about it. Thankfully, Fee was in our shoes since she knew we were there waiting and waiting for the bus, and the bus never passed by on that day. Fee tried to negotiate for us on the phone which did not seem simple because of APT’s attitude. To shorten it, we had to go for another trip that we didn’t plan for; otherwise, we would lose the money and our day would be spoiled.
What really bothers us though is that they never try to contact us since we left them our mobile phone number when we booked. Please note that we already paid full fee for that trip two days ago.
We found this incident left us a really bad image toward Melbourne. We cannot understand how the travel agent can take the money beforehand and still leave their customers without even trying to contact them. The Information Centre also failed to positively respond to the tourists’ complaints.
We really appreciate the atmosphere and cultural heritage in Melbourne. But we also like to contribute our experience for your reference. There are rooms to improve in regards to the service quality. We certainly hope this incident doesn’t reflect the cultural heritage of Melbourne. And we really can’t share our stories in Melbourne without warning our friends to watch out for such misshapenness.
And once again, we ’d like to emphasize that Fee working for Melbourne Connection helped us a lot, more than the help we got from the Information Centre.
Thank you for your time of processing our complaints. We would like to know if this can make a difference for the beautiful Melbourne city.
Sincerely,
Pei Jin Tsai
Noparat Tananuraksakul