Boater’s Choice

I meant to write this in July but a conversation caused me to remember it tonight. We have been going to Boater’s Choice for years. This year was not a good experience. I had called several times to make reservation and ask questions. I told the guy on the phone several times that I had eight people and a small dog. I didn’t complain when they explained that is was no longer a $ 25.00 deposit but half of the amount which had also gone up. We were running about five minutes late so I called and told them we were five minutes late. We were actually four minutes late but as we started to board a young said we had too many people. I counted again and there were 8of us. She pointed at the dog and stated that the dog counted as a person. We have a small Boston Terrier. We have taken that same dog with us for years and no one has ever said he counted as a person.
We argued for another ten minutes and our only choice was to take the dog back and leave him in the car, wait until 2:30pm (it was noon) and pay for a bigger boat or leave and lose our deposit. It was a cool day so we took our dog back to the car. I was pissed. I ask for the time back on our boat rental and some smart ass teenager turned around and said that I had called and said I was going to be late and so I don’t get time back. I was four minutes late not 15 minutes late. So we agreed finally while the clock was ticking that they would give us 10 minutes back.
This ruined the day. By the time they finished explaining rules and how to operate the boat (things we already knew because we used them for years) we had about 40 minutes left. Everyone was mad. I told the guy on the phone three different times that we had eight people and a small dog and everyone on the boat heard me tell him because we were all staying in the same cabin. It was just ridiculous.
We brought the boat back and no one said thank you for coming or anything, they just stared at us. We were loyal customers but we will use someone else next year.

Fortunately, Boater’s Choice is not the only place to rent lake toys. The staff was pretty rude and we had to wait in line for a good 15 minutes when checking in with a reservation. No big deal until they wanted to cut that time out of our rental time. Our reservation was supposed to be set for 10:30 but they had written down 10:00am. When we told them that the lady who helped us the day before told us 10:30 would be perfect, the kid behind the window’s response was, «well that’s on her.» WOW. Talk about poor customer service training. We definitely won’t rent from them again just based on the attitudes of the staff. Especially since their competition (their words) are a stones throw away. You’d think people would be happy working at a lake — there’s definitely something going there with management.

There seems to be a lack of communication among the staff, customer service is inconsistent. Some employees were very friendly, others ignored us, and others were rude. Other than that the boats were clean and affordable. We’ll try the place with the paddle boats next time.

We’ve rented boats here several years. Always great service.