We called on Saturday afternoon to make reservations (as the website recommends) for a half-day outing on Sunday. With a chance of rain in the forecast for our fishing day, we were concerned about what would happen in the event of bad weather. The woman with whom we spoke assured us that nothing but thunder and lightning would keep the boat out of the water.
Unfortunately, we discovered the hard way that there is at least one other thing that will keep this vessel in its moorings: a low passenger turnout.
Sunday morning was reasonably clear-skied after all (most pertinently, there was no rain in Brigantine, NJ) and we drove an hour and a half from the Philadelphia area at 6 am to get to the marina in time for the advertised 8 am departure. You can imagine our surprise and disappointment when we were told matter-of-factly by the captain - after waiting for half an hour in his plain view, it's worth adding - that he would not be going out today because there weren't enough paying customers to make it worth his while.
We're certainly sympathetic to the fact that this small business could take a sizeable loss if, for example, the cost of fuel for the outing exceeded the revenue brought in by a too-small number of passengers, but our gripes are these:
1. We made our reservation just a half day before the trip was to take place. The staff was fully aware that we would be coming from an hour and a half away; it was discussed on the phone while going over directions. If the number of reservations was small at that point, warning us that this could jeopardize the outing would have been the ethical and considerate thing to do.
2. If your website says that your boat takes "two trips daily - 7 days a week" and provides no further caveats, then to do anything else is to advertise falsely. Give customers the full story.
3. It doesn't take (or cost) all that much, in unfortunate situations like these, to show some good will to your customers - and perhaps, in the process, retain their future business. Sincere apologies, for one, go a long way. And what harm would have been done, for example, by offering us a voucher for a discount on a future trip?
Where the captain failed as a business man in this situation, in our opinion, was in his neglecting to place a fininacial value on the perceived reliability of his service. A classic case of being "penny- wise and pound-foolish." We'll never try the Fish Finder II again. read more