Oh, where do I start? On June 1, 2021, my wife reserved 2 drift boats for July 7th. We later…read morecalled to change the reservation for 1 drift boat for July 8th, but we were never able to speak to a live person, so my wife left a voicemail. After a few days of not hearing back from Dutch John Resort, my wife called again and left another message. Long story short, my wife called a total of 5 times and no one ever returned her call. One person said someone would.
Jump to July 8th. We arrived at the store to pick up our drift boat, what a nightmare. We contacted the young lady who was working in the fly fishing store, and she was truly a breath of fresh air (Ms. Martinez is her name). She went through our reservations and it turns out whoever was responsible for updating our reservation decided to just cancel it. Ms. Martinez handled our reservation as a walk in and was able to direct us to the general store where we were able to book a drift boat for the day. We paid for the rental and drove around to the back side of the store to retrieve our rental. No, it was not that easy.
I handed my receipt to the gentleman and he told me to park near the trailers they have lined up near the parking lot, so that is what I did. After approximately 15 minutes, nothing is happening. I walked back over to the boat rental "shack" and the gentleman is telling me my ball hitch is to big ( mine is a 2 5/16 hitch, but I need a 2 inch ball hitch). As he is searching for a hitch, I hear him speaking with another employee asking where "P" is (I used his first initial so I don't embarrass "P"). He then tells the employee "P" is not supposed to be driving because he doesn't have a license, and he is gone, he is finished with "P" because he has told him before not to drive without a driver's license. After approximately an hour of waiting, he finds a ball hitch, hooks up my truck to the trailer and has me drive around to a covered outside fenced area.
I did as he requested. I exited my vehicle and I saw the drift boat rental assigned to me. The boat was covered in dirt, there were beer cans and drink cans in the boat and water was still in the boat. He proceeds to use an empty Folgers coffee container to bale out the water, then I help him load it onto the trailer with 2 other employees. As my wife and I are driving out to were we are going to launch the boat, we start discussing the time we wasted waiting for the gentleman to find a tow hitch and prepping the boat. I decided to call Dutch John to see if I could return the boat a first thing in the morning due to the delay and due to the current time; it was approximately 1400 hours when we finally hit the road to the launch site. Oh yeah, the launch site was about an hour away, and the boat needed to be returned by 1900 hours; that simply was not going to happen.
A young lady answered the phone and told us if we kept the boat past 1900 hours, we would incur a second days charge ($270.00). We said never mind, but called back 5 minutes later to rent the boat for a second day. Sounds easy enough, right? Nope.
When I returned the boat on the 9th, a young man told me I was not getting my deposit back because I did not return the boat on the previous day. He told me "Dave" wanted to talk to me, so he went into the store to get Dave. A few minutes later he came back out and told me "Dave" wanted me to go into the store to talk to him. At this point I am getting very frustrated, but I complied.
I walked into the store and asked for "Dave". Guess what, "Dave" was to busy to speak with me, so he sent out one of his employees. The employee was a young lady and she was very nice, courteous and respectful. I explained my "Dutch John Resort" experience with her and she told me she would go back to speak with "Dave". I don't even know if there really is a "Dave" as I have never seen or spoken with him. Anyway, she returns and cleared up THEIR confusion about the late return. I showed the young lady the charge on my card for the second day. Overall experience would be a 1, but the two ladies I dealt with were very helpful, courteous, understanding and respectful.
My suggestion, rent elsewhere. Jesse & Kathy