Golden Touch Transport

Review: I contracted Golden Touch to bus ~40 guests to our wedding on 7/*/13 at the cost of $1301.19. We paid extra since the bus was contracted to remain at the location for the duration. When our guests were dropped off, the driver told them that they could leave personal items on the bus. My guests trusted this and did leave personal items on the bus, including medicine for my niece who had recently suffered a severe allergic reaction and was having trouble breathing. The bus then broke contract and left the location immediately after dropping off our guests at 4:30pm and "broke down" at 5pm. According to Golden Touch's dispatcher, the bus was taken to a shop and abandoned there for the night. The driver left the bus there with full knowledge that personal items had been left aboard, and made no effort to return these items to our guests. Again, these items included medicine for a young girl with a severe allergic reaction. Thirty minutes after the wedding ended, a single 17-passenger vehicle arrived to transport the more than 40 guests who were expecting the transportation we paid for to NYC (>90 minutes away) and a nearby hotel. The driver took more than the legal limit of passengers on the vehicle to the hotel, including adults sitting on each other's laps to try and fit. This left more than 20 guests sitting outside in >80 degree weather, as the venue had to close its doors. At this time, our guests, including the medically sensitive, were still without their medicine and personal items, even though the urgency and seriousness of this was communicated clearly to the dispatcher. Thirty minutes later, another 17-passenger vehicle arrived. This vehicle was again too small to transport our remaining guests who had been sitting outside the venue since it closed. The driver again took more than the legal limit of passengers. This again resulted in adults sitting on each other's laps, this time for the >90 minute ride to NYC. Again, the dispatcher refused to take any further actions to retrieve our personal items from the original bus, including the needed medicine. Once this bus departed, we still had additional guests sitting outside the venue. The dispatcher said the next closest vehicles were even smaller, and more than 40 minutes away. With no reason to believe that Golden Touch would ever finish transporting my guests, I had to call the guests who had already driven their personal vehicles back to the hotel to ask them to leave their families and drive back to the venue to pick up people and transport them to the hotel. Not only were were forced to do the work we had paid Golden Touch to do at our own personal cost, but I had to remain on the phone with Golden Touch for hours after I arrived at the hotel, until 1:30am, on my wedding night as my wife fell asleep from exhaustion of apologizing to our guests and dealing with the issue created by Golden Touch... while I tried to get them to return our medicine and personal items. Eventually after 1:30am the dispatcher refused to help me any further, and refused to escalate my call. He said the medicine would be returned to us immediately the next morning. It is now five days since my wedding and this conversation, and I STILL have not received our medicine and personal items from Golden Touch. Finally in order to stop my niece, still recovering from a severe allergic reaction the previous day, from having difficulty breathing... a hotel room we paid for had to be abandoned so that drugs could be bought at the nearest all-night pharmacy in New York City. More than a 90 minute drive from the hotel at 2am. After all of this, Golden Touch ignored all of my emails until the words "lawyer" and "Revdex.com" were used, at which point I promptly received a phone call. However, they still refused to offer any compensation. There's no amount of money that can buy back me entirely missing spending my wedding night with my wife, or the mortification of making my guests sit sweating outside of the venue for more than an hour after we had promised them safe transportation. I did however request a refund of all of the gratuity (Golden Touch added this to the initial cost) and half of the remaining fee ($176 gratuity, plus $562.59). A paltry amount compared to what was lost and could not be recovered by any amount of money, but I wanted some form of justice and admission of negligence. Golden Touch refused this amount and offered $300 dollars. Less than half of what was requested. After refusing to let them ignore me and getting the attention of their management, they refused to offer any more than the $300 plus the gratuity. Their handling of the situation from start to end is offensive, disrespectful, and negligent to the point of endangering the health of their guests.Desired Settlement: After they have ignored my calls and emails, the disrespect they have shown, their still ongoing refusal to return the medicine and personal items of our guests, and refusal to cooperate to remedy the situation they created, I am now seeking a complete refund of the entire price paid, $1,301.19.

Consumer

Response:

At this time, I have not been contacted by Golden Touch Transport regarding complaint ID [redacted].