I debated writing this review, but ultimately, I know it's information I wish I had known prior to having this experience.
First and foremost, the tour is exceptional. Mary is extremely knowledgable about the subject area, is passionate, and is able to answer just about any question. The subject area of this tour is obviously a sensitive one, but Mary does a fantastic job appropriately highlighting the atrocities that occurred while still honoring the humanity of those who were subjugated. As a long-time history fan, I could not have asked for more from this tour. Truly, one of the better tours I've ever taken.
All in all, the tour was fantastic, worth every penny, and up until the last 25 minutes, was the highlight of our trip.
As we wrapped up at the Polin museum, we had about 25 minutes left in the window that had been reserved for our tour. We asked Mary if she would mind taking us by an ATM because we needed more cash. Now, to be clear: we had the cash to pay for the tour, but part way through (when Mary was off paying for parking), we both agreed that the tour was so great that we really wanted to give Mary a substantial tip-- and to do that, we needed to stop for more cash. Since we had time leftover, we didn't think this would be an issue.
Mary cheerfully agreed to take us by an ATM back toward our rental in Old Town with the same affable, lovely demeanor she had the whole tour. We stopped at the first ATM, but it was out of order. I found another ATM up the block on my phone and Mary drove us up to it. While my friend got out to try the machine, Mary and I were chatting and I asked if there was a way for her to take a digital payment, like Venmo, Paypal, Applepay, etc. (my thinking was if this ATM doesn't work, we at least could still tip her another way), but Mary said no. About that time, my friend got back to the car and told us that the second ATM was also not working.
We still had about 20 minutes left in our scheduled tour time and Mary asked if there was another ATM we wanted to try. I brought up the Google results on my phone and showed her, asking if any of those were convenient. She sort of pushed my phone away without really looking at it and said she didn't know, which is fair enough. About that time, she said, "This is not good" and her whole demeanor changed.
Mary raised her voice and very sharply said, "You have two choices: you either give me the money you have on you now or I take you to the police." We were shocked. This was a full 180 on how she had been the entire tour and even 2 minutes prior. We both said, "No no, you misunderstand, we want to pay you and aren't trying to get out of that, we just wanted to get more cash to---" and she cut us off, again sharply shouting that she would just take us to the police then because she needs her money. She kept threatening the police, demanding to know how much cash we had, and wouldn't let us speak without talking over us about how she was going to take us to the police.
When it was clear this wasn't going anywhere positive, we gave her all of the cash we had on us (580 PLN-- which is 60 PLN more than the 520 PLN cost of the tour, so she still happily took that much smaller tip, I guess). We got out of the car and wordlessly, Mary flipped the vehicle around in the middle of the road and sped off. We found ourselves standing there in the road in shock, with a full 15 minutes left on our scheduled tour time.
The whole situation was absolutely surreal. We are experienced world travelers and have visited many countries, with many different cultural norms, where we have taken many different tours. We have never, ever been spoken to like that. It was so weird that we spent the rest of our trip in shock. To be totally clear: Mary’s behavior at the end there was not at all like it was the rest of the incredible tour and we didn’t experience that kind of hostility anywhere else in Poland (including on the tour we took from a different company two days later, which was also wonderful).
In Mary's defense: we said we needed more money to pay, but we didn't specify that we were trying to get more money to tip her 100% of the tour cost. She clearly must have thought we were trying to short her on the actual cost of the tour – I just wish she had let us clarify before threatening to have us arrested. Maybe she was having a uniquely bad day or had recently been ripped off by other tourists, I don’t know.
So, the tour is great! EXCEPTIONAL actually. I highly suggest it. Just make sure you bring enough cash to give a healthy tip on top of your tour cost. I would suggest to Mary that she offer options to prepay for the tours as well, especially if there’s clearly some serious issues related to folks paying.
