[See updates below for movement from 1 star to 4 stars.]
This review is not about the front line support, dive masters, instructors etc. In fact, it is a sad story of management failure in a booking that destroyed a day of diving by not following through in their systems of reservations even though follow-up calls by myself were done and completed with real live people. This review is about a failure by Maui Diving Scuba & Snorkel and a subsequent inability to offer any recompense. While Maui Diving explicitly states they have a 72 hour cancellation policy, that applies to the customers and not them. They dropped the ball, blew a day on a boat to Cathedrals, and simply said sorry. Not really enough from my perspective. You can stop here or read on for the gory details.
Does Maui Diving have a dive boat? I am not sure. They book through Extended Horizons, something I learned the day of failure, which is both a dive shop and a dive boat. Extended Horizons were unaware of me and my buddy when we showed up at 6:30AM ready to go on a day to Lanai. What I learned was that Maui had not communicated with them to load us into their system. Extended Horizons were very apologetic even though it was not their fault. They booked us on the next available which was three days later.
Extended Horizons is reviewed on their page and that included a great night dive followed by a great boat dive to Cathedrals. Unfortunately, due to weather we had to scrub Cathedrals and revert to the Carthaginian and Mala pier. Too bad. Cathedrals will have to wait.
Maui, my advice to you is to fix whatever needs fixing. That I think is self evident. The bigger change is how you handle such fumbles in the future. At the very least, offer a discount to the epic failure of us showing up at a dive ramp only to be turned away for a dive that was booked six weeks out, credit card charged, confirmation email sent with lots of details (The Extended Horizons team was shocked to see that email).
Suffice it to say, the moral of this experience is to book with the operator of the boat and not a third party, which Maui is a third party at least for the Cathedrals trip. I did tons of research and Muai came up in my Maui Revealed book as a great company. Apparently a change in management? They may very well be a great company, but their handling of this mishap was sad and insufficient.
update 2/24/2018
This is after Jessica's reply below...
Jessica, I appreciate the measures you have implemented and I do understand things happen. It is how we respond to those failures and take our learning forward. It appears you have done that with your systems, but not in your actions with a customer (me). I in fact waited outside your dive shop at 7AM in the morning trying to figure out what to do. I then got a hold of Extended Horizons and went to their shop as yours was not to open till 9AM. I made numerous calls that day trying to figure things out. I do not believe a customer should have to ask for something with such a complete failure. Think about this a bit, I prepped the dive and got up to be ready to go the day of the dive at 6:30AM. Made no other plans that day. Discovered it was a completely exploded day. If not for Extended Horizons extending themselves, which I later learned, it would have been far worse. You owe them a big thank you.
It is not too late to offer something in return for my misery Jessica. You have my credit card on file, make a credit. Happy to update this and the other two reviews on Trip Advisor and Google. We had a great trip this week, but not because of Maui Diving Scuba & Snorkel. It was a great trip because of the other great dive shops and people that make them hum. Please allow me the opportunity to add more to this review and include you and your dive shop in their ranks.
Update 2/25/2018
After subsequent emails from Jessica (owner).
I am changing my review from 1 star to 4 stars. Jessica was very apologetic and owned the failure in her systems completely. Apparently, she was unaware of what had happened and other junior management had left a simple voicemail of apologies. In addition, Jessica offered a more than generous recompense for the failure.
I consider this matter closed and will give Maui Diving another try on my next visit. I do not know if it is rare for Maui dive shops to own such mistakes and take care of them equitably, but suffice it to say this happened with Maui Diving Scuba & Snorkel. It is important to state again that this was a management failure and not at all the "personality" of the management and in fact was a systems failure followed by an insufficient response which Jessica remedied. read more