Trip report Sep 2014: Palau Aggressor - VERY BAD EXPERIENCE

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

Individually these issues may be minor, but they seem to consistently show a lack of respect for other people.

Each incident built upon the next.
 
Sure it is. The damage is permanent and will increase over time.

Absolutely right. Which is why a responsible dive crew member would take it upon themselves to approach such a guest in a non-threatening way and initially explain that what seems like a small issue to them is actually a big problem that will get worse over time and offer to help them learn better skills so they can avoid damaging coral in the future. An irresponsible crew member races over under water and screams unintelligible sounds at them through the regulator. With the responsible crew approach, the guest learns that they are diving in a delicate ecosystem and might try harder to control their buoyancy in the future. With the irresponsible approach, the guest learns that they are diving with an unstable maniac for a DM and probably does their best to avoid the DM for the rest of the trip.

A guest was told to not touch someone else's personal property, and someone else has sounds made at them underwater when destroying coral.

No, the guest was not "told", they were screamed and cursed at for touching somebody else's computer in what would seem to be an innocent attempt to help. A better approach would be to ask politely that they not touch the computer. If it were a repeat thing where the guy just couldn't seem to keep his hands off it after multiple polite requests, then I could see possibly cursing at them...but I would still find it inappropriate if they were my employee.

It's not like anybody was on a drunken rampage.

I didn't see any indication that alcohol was involved...but it did sound like Randy could use some practice at controlling his temper if he wants to stay involved in the tourism trade.

In any case, especially when stuck on a small boat full of strangers, everybody needs to make a special effort to not be overly-sensitive. There's always something that will twist your shorts if you let it.

Excellent! Something we can agree about! How about if we also agree that tolerance and making a special effort to not be overly sensitive about things start with the crew? If the crew can be calm and rational and respond to things they don't like with measured and reasonable requests to the guests, then I expect that the guests will find it easier to follow suit.
 
This sort of reminds me of one day as an Instructor this past summer when I was leading dives. I took a group of 6-8 people out on a dive and then returned to shore to do a surface interval. Prior to getting off of the boat I explained when and where to meet for the next briefing and dive. Once it was time for the briefing one person didn't show up. I stalled for 10 minutes and eventually started the briefing even though one person was still missing. A few minutes later just as I was about to finish the briefing, the missing person walked up, interrupted the briefing and said he was surprised that I was briefing without him. I immediately stopped the briefing to explain to him that he was late and that I delayed the briefing for 10 minutes while everyone waited on him. After the briefing he claimed that I yelled at him, embarrassed him in front of everyone else and demanded that I provide him with the owners name. He physically threatened me if I EVER talked to him that way again. Additionally he wanted a refund on the previous dives that he had done over the past two days and threatened to give a negative review on Trip Advisor if the diveshop didn't meet his demands. Luckily there were other customers who came to my defense who witnessed everything. So I for one just happen to know there are two sides to almost every story. Some tourists can be very demanding and many times overly sensitive, even when no ill will was intended. Some people just need to realize that we are all humans and deserve a certain amount of respect and stop looking for excuses to complain or claim they have been harmed in some obscure way. As I told the customer, diving is suppose to be fun, so let's just go diving and stop arguing.
 
This sort of reminds me of one day as an Instructor this past summer when I was leading dives. I took a group of 6-8 people out on a dive and then returned to shore to do a surface interval. Prior to getting off of the boat I explained when and where to meet for the next briefing and dive. Once it was time for the briefing one person didn't show up. I stalled for 10 minutes and eventually started the briefing even though one person was still missing. A few minutes later just as I was about to finish the briefing, the missing person walked up, interrupted the briefing and said he was surprised that I was briefing without him. I immediately stopped the briefing to explain to him that he was late and that I delayed the briefing for 10 minutes while everyone waited on him. After the briefing he claimed that I yelled at him, embarrassed him in front of everyone else and demanded that I provide him with the owners name. He physically threatened me if I EVER talked to him that way again. Additionally he wanted a refund on the previous dives that he had done over the past two days and threatened to give a negative review on Trip Advisor if the diveshop didn't meet his demands. Luckily there were other customers who came to my defense who witnessed everything. So I for one just happen to know there are two sides to almost every story. Some tourists can be very demanding and many times overly sensitive, even when no ill will was intended. Some people just need to realize that we are all humans and deserve a certain amount of respect and stop looking for excuses to complain or claim they have been harmed in some obscure way. As I told the customer, diving is suppose to be fun, so let's just go diving and stop arguing.

If I could like this a million times. Folks complain that my wife (lead DM) yells at them. She has never raised her voice with a customer, that's my job. Yes, you might get "the look", but that comes with all women, in my experience.
 
I totally agree that there are always two sides to the story and we are working with only one here. I have seen the same thing in reviews of places I know to be great dive resorts where the enforcement of a simple rule (don't lock out your computer by ignoring deco or you will sit out 24-48 hours) end up causing people to claim the entire resort is terrible. Unfortunately, the Aggressor folks are the only ones in a position to actually give us clarity, and they chose to disown the situation. They could easily reach out to the other folks who were on the boat and see what their impressions were and come back with the true story if it is different from the OPs account. Or they could come back and say that after looking into it that the OP's account was accurate and the employee in question has been (re-trained/reprimanded/fired/etc.). Instead they said "we don't own the boat" and "personnel matters are confidential". Which is ultimately them saying "we don't want to accept any responsibility for what happens on our boats" and "we don't want to be held accountable for how we respond to reports that our employees represent the company badly". The management response (or lack thereof) to instances like these often can be as informative about a company as the original claims against them.
 
AggieDiver:
Golden.
 
I don't think most businesses will disclose the details of an internal investigation. If you tell the complainer the investigation didn't substantiate a problem, the complainer feels emboldened. If you tell the complainer you fired someone, you're admitting the employee did something awful to the complainer, who will likely report it to others online. Some companies will mix in a bunch of honeyed B.S. with their reply, emphasizing how concerned they are about customer satisfaction and how they're taking your complaint very seriously, etc..., but in the end, I think it's the same thing, with some flavoring to help it go down better.

Richard.
 
I don't think most businesses will disclose the details of an internal investigation. If you tell the complainer the investigation didn't substantiate a problem, the complainer feels emboldened. If you tell the complainer you fired someone, you're admitting the employee did something awful to the complainer, who will likely report it to others online. Some companies will mix in a bunch of honeyed B.S. with their reply, emphasizing how concerned they are about customer satisfaction and how they're taking your complaint very seriously, etc..., but in the end, I think it's the same thing, with some flavoring to help it go down better.

Richard.

Richard, there is naturally a component of that going on in any business, however I do believe that consumers need to know that when dealing with the Aggressor and Dancer fleet that they are clearly operating behind this corporate setup and that you will only ever get to deal with the "representative company". Furthermore this "representative company will do what ever they need to, to deflect the blame on to the individual yachts. So the holding/representative company will not accept any blame and will not offer compensation and you naturally will not be able to deal directly with the individual yacht owner as they are being protected by the "representative company". Whether this structure will protect them from huge issues is unclear but it certainly allows them to deflect more minor complaints.
 
Thanks all for the comments.


For the record, of course I didn't whine and complain about the situations to the crew members on the boat or rarely talk about it with other guests in an open space. I have just observed it and left it behind until I have returned back home and after a few weeks later, I finally posted it on the forum. Mainly because I didn't want to start complaining to the crew members on the boat to make other guests uncomfortable, and instead I focused on good diving and connecting with the great guests from around the globe. Some of the guests on the boat were wonderful we ended up connecting on facebook and we have been communicating often about which liveaboard to do next. During the one week trip on liveaboard, maybe 1/3 of the guests talked about the inappropriate behaviors (in a humorous manner) up on the deck when other people were sleeping. And we were hilariously talking about writing the issues on the tripadvisor or similar website.


The reason why I have posted this on the forum is that not everyone can accept this kind of behavior from the crew members, whether it was the divers' fault or not, or whether it is directly towards myself or not. The bad attitude can affect the whole atmosphere on the boat. There are other/better ways to amend the situations if something goes wrong. If this type of behavior does not mind some divers, then it is a liveaboard to go to for them. If I pay over US$3K to do a one week liveaboard, I rather would like to go with someone else with a better atmosphere (there are a lot of those out there). I posted this on the forum so that by reading this, people can decide on their own whether they want to go with Aggressor or not. I did not post this on the forum thinking to receive refund from the management - that's not my intention. I just want people to be aware of the current situations on the Palau Agressor.


The other reason that I didn't complain on the boat is that I just felt it's useless to complain to the crew members on the boat, it just gets ugly on the boat, of course they will not admit what they have done wrong, and will not escalate it to the management. At least the management is aware of my comments (whether they are doing anything about it I will never know).


Lastly, the Gopro filter that I lost is the red filter only, but I'm not going to bother checking on the website nor going back at them for the refund - waste of time dealing with the management any further.


There are other small incidents that I have witnessed that I didn't even want to bother writing on the forum, but since people feel that these incidents are one sided, one of those was, DM's poor dive briefing - before every dive, DM briefly talked about the dive site, and does not even mention where we will get dropped off and picked up and whether reef on the right or left. And he mumbles and people can't really listen. There were a total of 18 divers (including DM's girlfriend) and so many times divers were like "What? What did you say?" Especially if we are diving in a big group and no one is taking care of you besides your buddy, it is very important for DM to do a detailed dive briefing. If DM doesn't know where the current is going, DM should tell us so and let us know later when we get to the dive site. (I did not write this in the original post as this is not about "bad" attitude, more about mumbling dive briefing and safety issues). There are a number of more small issues that I noticed but I can't bother writing every single one of them, I just focused on a few major behavioral issues.


Since Aggressor/Dancer Fleet is a franchise, they are supposed to be doing an inspection on the boat from time to time to ensure that the boat/crew standards meet their expectation, for them to feel comfortable putting their name on the boat as a franchisor. They are taking 30% cut on the gross proceeds from each customer, meaning if I pay US$3,000 to do Palau Agressor liveaboard, Aggressor/Dance Fleet franchisor is taking US$900 from every customer (the crew salaries, boat maintenance, and every expense incurred on the boat except advertising needs to be paid from the remaining amount, meaning the boat owner will have much much less than 70% of the gross proceeds in his pocket). That is a huge cut and diverting the responsibilities and emphasizing in the beginning of every email reply saying that "we do not own the boat" (=they don't take responsibilities) when it's convenient for them is not acceptable, at least for me.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

Back
Top Bottom