Abisko aurora borealis tour guide battles app-obsessed guests demanding refunds over low prediction percentages, drags them outside anyway, witnesses their shock when northern lights show up: ‘They were quite surprised to say the least’

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  • But the aurora app says there won't be an aurora tonight so why won't you refund us?

    "But the aurora app says there won't be an aurora tonight so why won't you refund us?"
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  • So, once again it's time for another one of my stories. This one took place in Abisko only two years ago.
  • At this point in time we run our own tour company in Abisko so we have to deal with the entire chain from sales to doing the tour and any follow up.
  • Anyway, we had a relatively small group, maybe 5p or so in total that had the aurora BBQ tour booked for the evening.
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  • And a couple of hours before the tour starts one person calls and asks what we are going to do about the tour that night.
  • I don't quite understand so I ask them to clarify what they mean, because as far as I know there are no issues with the tour,
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  • I had taken the meat out do defrost and the weather forecast looked great. Well as it turns out they had these nifty aurora prediction apps, which said there was a 0% or less than 1% chance to see any auroras that night.
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  • And they wanted to cancel and refund the tour. Now, the thing is that these apps kind of work if you are further south where you need a major geomagnetic event to trigger visible auroras,
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  • but in Abisko where a sideways glance from the sun is enough to make the aurora dance across the sky you just can't trust these apps.
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  • I explain this to the guests, but they of course didn't believe me and they said they didn't want to go and demanded a refund.
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  • Well, the refund window is 24h, after that no refunds except in cases of Force Majure, which this clearly was not.
  • After quite a bit of whining and arguing back and forth they decide they will come on the tour anyway, but we are scammers that won't refund when we won't see any aurora.
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  • And they complain the whole time during the cooking that there was no aurora and that we won't see anything.
  • They even explained it to all the other guests trying to get them to also be upset with us.
  • Fortunately the other guests didn't buy it and simply wanted to try their best no matter the chances.
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  • After dinner we get everyone dressed up nice and warm and head out, the whole time we get occasional complaints.
  • We drive a bit away from the village to a nice dark spot with clear sky and a nice view, and for a start there was nothing but stars.
  • And of course they kept being smug about them being right.
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  • After about half an hour of waiting a thin wisp of aurora appeared. They where still not convinced.
  • But after waiting a little while longer it started growing, and at the end of the night we had a bright band of green and pink slowly dancing across the sky above us.
  • They where quite surprised to say the least, and everyone was supper happy.
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  • They thanked me so much that I basically forced them to join the tour, because otherwise they would just have stayed inside watching TV.
  • They even wrote a long e-mail the day after to thank us and gave us a couple of 5 star reviews.
  • Sometimes the stories does have a wholesome ending.
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