The short version: we never take your money. Not a booking fee, not a deposit, not a payment for the guide, not at any point before, during or after your tour. Because nothing is ever paid to us, there is never anything for us to refund.
Last updated 22 October 2026
Our guides are volunteers. They are not paid a wage by the club and they receive no commission from any shop, restaurant, museum or workshop you visit. If anyone claiming to be from Hanoi Free Private Tour Guide asks you to pay or transfer money in advance, it is not us. Write to hanoifreeprivatetourguide@gmail.com and tell us.
You buy every ticket yourself, in cash, at the counter, on the day. Your guide does not collect money from you and does not buy tickets on your behalf.
Most museums and sites in Hanoi charge around 40,000 VND per person. You cover your guide’s ticket as well as your own: it is the one thing we ask, and it is how a free guide can go inside with you rather than wait at the gate.
Yours, and your guide’s if you invite them to eat with you. On the street food tour you pay for what you order, stall by stall.
Only when a stop is too far to walk. A taxi or a Grab between stops, or transport out to a craft village or to Duong Lam.
Some experiences are run by partner venues at their own prices – the night tours at the Temple of Literature and Thang Long Citadel, and the tire sandal workshop. You pay the venue directly, the same price any walk-in visitor pays.
Because a free tour should stay flexible. If you wake up and decide you would rather skip the museum and spend longer in the Old Quarter, you can – and you have lost nothing, because you had not bought anything yet. Pre-booking tickets would take that away.
Entrance tickets and workshop fees are sold by the museum, the site or the workshop, under their rules, not ours. If you buy a ticket and then cannot use it, whether you get your money back is the venue’s decision. We have no part in that transaction and cannot refund it, because we never received it.
Reply to the WhatsApp message your guide sent you, or message the club on (+84) 976 369 796. You do not need to give a reason and nobody will ask for one. There is no fee, because there was never a payment.
Same thing: message us. Changing the route on the morning of the tour is normal and your guide expects it. Changing the date needs a little more notice, because the guide who kept that day may not be free on another.
Your guide will wait at the meeting point, and then go home. There is no fee and we will not chase you. But a volunteer kept a day free, travelled to meet you and turned down other tours to do it, so a one-line message costs you nothing and saves that.
Guides are assigned in advance, so this is rare. If something unavoidable happens, our coordinator finds you another guide. If that is not possible either, we will ask whether you can move the time – and we only move it if you agree. We will not simply not turn up.
Write to hanoifreeprivatetourguide@gmail.com, message (+84) 976 369 796 on WhatsApp, or come to the office at 158 Chua Lang, Dong Da, Hanoi. More ways to reach us are on the contact page.
This policy applies to tours arranged through this website. If you booked through TripAdvisor or GetYourGuide, those platforms have their own booking and cancellation terms, which apply alongside this one. How we handle the details you give us is set out in our privacy policy.