I am writing to express my concerns about an experience at the Port Perry Marina during which my group's safety was placed at risk by a faulty boat and our credit card was charged improperly for repair work which we should not be responsible for.
The marina offers a service of boat rentals and issues temporary boating licenses. To rent a boat you take your pick from a selection of several old worn boats and pay a fee per hour for the boat. They also offer "damage insurance", in case of the high probability of something happening to one of the boats given that none of the drivers are required to have a real boating license, nor any prior experience in a boat. There is no training or safety lesson given prior; if you can pay for the rental you are given a boat. I was surprised to learn that there was no flashlight, flares, blankets or compass provided, which I expected as standard safety equipment in case of an emergency. The marina did not even provide a means to call them should their boat break down while in the lake.
Being concerned about safety and behaving in great caution given the risks at stake, my friends and I took the newest looking boat out at a very moderate speed. After several minutes the motor died. Luckily I had my cell phone and paperwork in my pocket and was able to call the marina to send out assistance. They fixed the motor and we continued our ride, returning to the marina about 45 minutes later. Had it not been for this luck, we would have been hopelessly stranded in the middle of the lake with no means of summoning help.
Upon returning to the marina the attendants checked over the boat and claimed that we had chipped the boat's propeller. I have no fathomable idea how we possibly could have caused the boat to incur such damage at such a slow careful speed, but they claimed the chip was not present when we left and that we were responsible for paying for it. They also claimed that the damage insurance deductible was $1,000.00, which was too high to cover the propeller repair, but originally they had told us that we could protect ourselves from several hundred dollars of repair bills by simply purchasing the damage insurance.
In shock, we asked for further assistance or an explanation of why the propeller was damaged, and why we were originally told that we could save ourselves several hundred dollars if we simply purchased the damage insurance. The attendant scoffed and rolled his eyes upon our request. He then left us to wait on the dock for 30 minutes.
Becoming impatient, we went to find someone else to help. We asked another worker, and he refused, saying it was not "my job" to help customers with these types of inquiries. We asked him who could help us, and was eventually advised that no one was coming and I would have to follow up by phone with the owner on a weekday.
After standing on the dock nearly hour at this point, we finally just went inside to find out what was going on. The attendant inside promptly asked us how we would like to pay for the damage, but we refused to pay and reminded him that we purchased the insurance based on what they told us originally. However, without saying anything further, the attendant simply charged the repair bill to the credit card belonging to a member of my group despite our objection. We left feeling completely cheated and ripped off. It was extremely disheartening that we could not receive the assistance which we politely requested or even an explanation for the different stories they told us about the "damage insurance" and ultimately could not enjoy our experience.
Our boat was unsafe and in an obvious state of disrepair, leaving us precariously in the middle of the lake with a stalled motor. The marina gave us a story about protecting ourselves from further costs in order to sell us their damage insurance, another story to blame us for the damage they "found", and still another story to deny us insurance coverage which was different from their first story. The cost of the repair was not much when divided up among my group member, but it was the principle of the matter, and how we were lied to right to our faces. read more