Pros
Golden Tours have plenty of buses. The buses are quite comfortable.
Giving open top bus tours as a guide is fun.
Opportunities for tips are good on the fixed routes with start & finish points.
Cons
I'll commence with the mitigation. I was recruited as emergency cover. The Christmas rush had overwhelmed the company's London operation and they needed guides quickly. The vacancy was for experienced London guides, so training wasn't seen as necessary. After a 60-second phone call, I simply sat-in on two tours - one clockwise, one counter-clockwise - and I was on the microphone.
The main problem with this was that it was a Christmas Lights tour. Regardless of a guide's knowledge of tourist hotspots and UK history, knowing which side-streets & courtyards had lights and what is in the window displays of stores that haven't previously been seen is always going to take a few tours. Diversions from the advertised routes were frequent, as traffic on the main shopping streets was often stationary. TV historians such as Peter Ackroyd & David Starkey would have struggled. Talking entertainingly while sitting in Pall Mall, motionless, for 10 minutes, with a darkened Oxford & Cambridge Club on the right & a building completely covered in tarpaulin & scaffolding to the left, with scarcely a street light visible, never mind a Christmas light, is challenging. Most of that is beyond Golden Tours' control.
What's not beyond their control is the cursory & somewhat chaotic recruitment process and communicating basic information to guides.
I was not asked for any documents. No ID. No bank details. No proof of my "right to work" in the UK was requested - which is asking for trouble from both uppity journalists and His Majesty's Government's bloodhounds.
Other than the vague figure in the recruitment ad, no rates of pay were mentioned.
E-mails have been ignored. Other temporary freelance guides relate the same experience. We are seemingly supposed to invoice the company in 48 hours time, on the 1st of the month, but none of the colleagues I've talked to knows the sums we should be invoicing them for or what form the invoices should take.
The company strongly emphasizes the importance of pushing for good online reviews. It has scannable cards that take a satisfied tourist directly to the website of the world's principal online review provider, but these are often unavailable.
The overworked and permanently stressed senior guide, who smokes in a manner reminiscent of D. Emery's driving instructor in the famous sketch, understandably makes the occasional error. He is being given far too much to do.
Perhaps senior management and admin staff have decided to take Christmas off, in spite of it being the busiest time of the year, leaving insufficient high-ranking officers to command the troops, but the company seems a shambles from the admittedly brief snapshot I've seen.