I have always been a bit cautious when reading others reviews. Everyone is open to their own opinion and experiences, but I do not want anyone else to go through this with them.
My husband and I rented a house on the Spokane river for our honeymoon. We are blending our family and thought this would be a great way to have a fun family vacation.
We reserved a wave runner and 19ft boat for 4 hours (2pm-6pm) through Couer d'Alene Adventures.(They have been fantastic and besides having to deal with HIWA, I have nothing poor to say about them). In addition, we rented an inner tube and a kneeboard. We KNEW this was going to run us about $800 bucks, but we wanted the experience with the kids and we were excited.
Our house was a ways from Lake Couer d'Alene so we started heading that way. We had no issues at all until we went to put our 2 girls (12 &13) on the inner tube. For some reason, whenever we tried to turn a hard left, the boat would jerk violently and slip out of gear. This happened about 4 times. I decided to call HIWA about 3:45 (almost 2 hours into our rental). I explained the situation and she told me that she would have someone call us right back. Because we were unsure of the issue we decided to slowly return back down the river to our house.
About 40 minutes later, we received a call and my husband tried to speak with the employee from HIWA to diagnose the issue. We were told to park the boat and not go out anymore. They told us that they would be willing to bring us another boat but it would take them about an hour to get there and we could keep it overnight. That had the boat arriving after 6 pm which was after our initial reservation and we had plans the next day at Silverwood. My husband declined the offer. He asked that we just be charged for the 2 hours we were able to enjoy the boat and we just call the experience a bust. THE EMPLOYEE AGREED TO DO SO (HIS NAME IS TODD). We waited until 6:30pm for them to arrive so that we could show them what it was doing. They did not arrive.
My family went to dinner and we thought everything was handled.
We left Friday afternoon and one the way home, I noticed that we had been charged $831.85 for the rental. No refunds had been applied.
I began calling Couer d'Alene adventures and Harrison Idaho Water Adventures. While I would get a call back from CDA, they were only the booking agent and were not able to apply the refund to our account. It took 9 days from the time of the reservation to get to speak with a manager, Tony, from Harrison Idaho Water Adventures. At that point he told me that they tested the boat and found no issues. From their perspective, nothing was wrong and they were not going to refund us for the 2 hours we were not able to use the boat or for the inner tube etc. I asked to speak with either Todd or Rusty.
I got a call from Rusty today. He said that because he could not find anything wrong with the boat, he would not refund any portion of our money. He said that "we have rented it out since, with no issues" and "we even towed a wave runner with no problems". When I asked why he hadn't called us to hear our description of the issue or to try and simulate the same experience, he said, "that's what I have managers for. I am only calling you because you won't accept the answer you were given by Tony." He said, " I find what you are saying to be unfounded and not likely. Why should I be the one to take the hit? From our perspective, how do we not know that you just decided to not use the boat and made the whole thing up?"
Sure! As a career mom with 4 kids, it is my joy to fabricate stories and spend hours on the phone leaving messages trying to get a call back.
Please know that I have said nothing here, that I have not said to the owner. I have asked him to be reasonable and to view this from our perspective as the customer. Instead, he essentially has called me a liar (saying that what we reported is unlikely) and that he is not willing to work with us.
I believe that he is a bully and is operating an unsafe business if he is not willing to listen to a customer who had a safety concern and stopped operating the boat as a precaution. I have contacted my lawyer and Couer d'Alene adventures. I will also be contacting the BBB and Katherine Coppock at the Couer d'Alene Chamber of Commerce. read more