Paying 2 times for 1 dive trip due to illness !?!?!

[trigfunctions]

No malfeasance is a pretty low standard for customer service. After this family spent a lot of money with this shop, you would think they would be treated better when a 12 year old girl gets the flu. There are many shops in the area who would have treated them much better.

By all means, give out the name of the operator. There's no malfeasance here. The boat was operating withing their rights as stated by their policies. I'd happily dive with them or any other boat operator who's been shown to have done nothing wrong.

 

[mathauck0814]

No malfeasance is a pretty low standard for customer service. After this family spent a lot of money with this shop, you would think they would be treated better when a 12 year old girl gets the flu. There are many shops in the area who would have treated them much better.

Shops maybe, but boats? I've never heard of a boat that didn't have a cancellation policy. If you have a 12 year old, perhaps trip insurance is a good fit for you?

 

[acteg]

I'm wondering how many people actually understood the OP's original thread. It is a bit confusing. The way I understand it is the OP & family were scheduled for a boat dive on Sunday. The OP canceled the dive on Saturday (within the 24 hr cancellation period of the boat operator) because her daughter was sick on Friday night. From that point of view, being charged again, seems wrong. What we don't know is if the dive shop booked the entire boat for the day (taking the boat operator's cancellation policy out of the equation), or had only reserved a few slots for their students. If the dive shop booked the entire boat for the day for a set price, then whether or not the dive shop acted appropriately is a different story entirely.

Personally, I would think twice about patronizing the shop in the future. There are too many other good shops out there that will go above and beyond for their customers (especially after the amount of $$ you spent there). I think it's pretty shortsighted of the dive shop. Moreover, if the dive shop knew they would charge you double at the time of your cancellation, they should have made you aware. If you had been aware, maybe you would have only canceled 1 or 2 slots instead of all 4.

 

[nimoh]

Boat operators are not getting fabulously wealthy running charters. In most cases the boats need to operate at a minimum capacity in order to break even on the overhead + fuel + crew costs. For that reason, most boats have cancellation policies that give them the ability to try to sell your seat. If you called your instructor at 5am the morning of the trip that would not give them enough notice to sell the seats and so you were charged. This is the way boats work.

On a separate note, it's best to take a longer view of things when it comes to diving. This is a very, very expensive activity. If you're going to get bent out of shape every time a few hundred dollars doesn't go your way, you're going to get very, very frustrated very, very quickly.

I agree, can't expect the boat to eat the lost revenue. For some, they may choose to forgo the profit by having a cancellation penalty, but if I were a boat operator, I would definitely not be giving full refunds.

 

[electrix]

It is surprising to me how many students get sick the night before their first open water dives.