Saw this on another forum. I feel bad for anyone taking up anything with insurance as that will be one more big frustrating headache. It seems like Wonderpus and others have a much better policy and were more helpful to their divers!
“Hostage on Aggressor dive boat.
Flights are booked, hotels are reserved and off we go from Los Angeles to Indonesia to stay on the Indo Aggressor Liveaboard for seven days. Once arrived, we were picked up at our hotel from the staff on the boat. We boarded and proceeded to get to our cabin, set up our dive gear and get prepped for 7 days of world class diving. I noticed when we had entered our room that there was a piece of duct tape covering the door switch latch. I thought this was strange, but didn’t pay much attention. The next morning I tried to leave the room and was locked inside. I pulled and tugged for 10 minutes, trying to open the door, but to no avail. The knob would turn, but the door latch was in permanent lock position. I proceeded to pound on the walls, having to awaken other guests to help us get out. They went and got the crew and it took them 20 minutes to get the door open. Fire hazard, I think so!!! This was my first red flag. Later that day we were in a briefing of the trip and notified that the weather is bad, and we are not leaving the dock and the trip was canceled but we were welcome to stay on board and they would feed us. After sitting around with the 12 other Dive guests, we quickly realized that this boat is the only one in the entire fleet of this massive Liveaboard harbor that has guests on board. One of our guests mentioned that there was another person in the hotel that had said the harbor had been shut down for two days prior to us getting on board, and she had tried to book 3 other boats, but none of them would accept her money because they knew the boats were not gonna be leaving due to the shut down for five days, possibly more. The Aggressor put us on this boat, knowing full well that they were not leaving the port, and taking our money and saying that the trip was not canceled. Mind you, most of us on this boat have spent between $7,000 to $10,000 US per couple to get here and pay for the boat. Feeling outraged, we collectively started doing more research and reached out to the vice president of Aggressor, Larry Speaker. His answer was simple, “the trip is not canceled; you are welcome to stay, and we will provide you food and housing in hopes that we will be able to leave the port and take you diving but if you feel like you would like to leave the ship, you’re welcome to do that as well. We suggest you turn this into your trip insurance company if you have any and see if they will reimburse you, but this trip is not canceled and we will not be giving any refunds at all.” Outraged, to say the least, most of the guests started contacting their travel agency to book Hotels, and flights out of Labuan Bajo. This proved to be quite difficult as we were about three days behind the ball from lack of communication, and everything in the town was booked. Flights to Bali were slim pickens because of the thousands of other guests on the other live aboards in the port, had already started doing the same thing. After six other guests had left the boat, we decided to stay on board and wait it out rather than spend even more money on a hotel, food and flights. We were trying to be positive in a bad situation, and hoped that the port opens up so we can go diving, our goal for this entire trip. There are two Dive dinghies for this large live aboard so we asked the Cruise Director if we could have them take us for a small cruise through the Harbor as an activity. His response was, I don’t know if I can, let me check with the office. Can you take us snorkeling here in the bay or at least go swimming? I don’t know, let me check with the office. After a full day of sitting on the boat, they approved us to go out for a small drive through the Harbor. We stopped by one of the other liver boards, “wounderpus” to visit one of my friends, the cruise Director from two previous trips, and his staff. I asked him where his guests were, and why they were not on the boat. He replied, we have paid for hotels, we are paying for them to go out on the small speed boats that are allowed to go out for day trips for diving, and are refunding them 60% of each days value they missed due to the shut down in the harbor. What a great example of how to handle a bad situation! Absolutely shocked that there are small speed boats going out for diving to local spots, we were not even offered this from the Aggressor. I contacted Larry Speaker and he simply said, “No, we will not be offering anything like this. We will feed you and house you, that’s it and you are welcome to leave.”
We have come all this way and if this is the only way to get out to dive, let’s do it! 3 dives for 2 people was $320.00 US.
The day was great and when we got back to the local shop “sea creatures” I meet the American owner of the shop and was telling him our story. He was shocked. He told me that all of the local dive shops here have an understanding with all of the Live aboard boats that if they can not get out to dive and they send them there to their shop they will discount the cost by half to help! Aggressor would not even agree to do that! Scooter rentals for the day are $10US would they pay for that? Nope!
Day 5 two more guests have left for better pastures and we are down to 4. The waters and wind are still flat but the harbor master has continued the shut down for 4 more days! Everyone in this town is shaking their heads in disgust.
We are making the best of our time stuck in port by renting scooters for the day, going to local waterfalls and caves and trying not to go stir crazy.
Last day on the boat and the harbor is open!!! Of course it is at 1:00pm and we have flights out the next morning.
Final thoughts…
We can not change the “weather” but we can change our attitudes. To the Aggressor and VP Lary Speaker there is so much you could have done to make our dream trip a good one. It’s the small things like being honest with us to begin. Realizing the distance all of us have traveled to get here and the thousands of dollars we have spent on the trip and to do NOTHING? Shame on you! You had no fuel cost, little staff cost and you did not even say I am sorry. Just NO to any suggestions we brought to you. Paying for $10 dollar scooters, put together a land event, pay half price to the speed boats so we can do some diving, maybe dinner on land for the group. I was even denied close line clips from the staff to hang my close out on the line. That’s ok Lary I went into town and bought you a 20 pack for a 80 cents so you have them on the dive boat for the next group you rip off! Please address the fire hazards on your boats! It just may save a life, or do you care?
It’s not the things that make a man great, it’s the man that makes things great! Lary Speaker and the Aggressor are just a poor excuse of a company. When things go great on your boats it’s not a worry for you but when things go really wrong, like this trip did, you should have been the man to help make this as good as possible and you did nothing but take our money and run!
Please share this with anyone you know who is a diver.”
