I rented a Waverunner and a boat with some friends and got charged an extra $190 upon returning because they found a small scratch BEHIND THE BUMPER. There is no way anyone could have seen such a scratch during the walk-through. When we looked at some other Waverunners right next to ours, we saw that a few of them had bumpers which were screwed on very loose as well.
We pointed this out to the owner's son, and he ignored this and restated that there was a scratch that was not circled during the walk-through; therefore we must have crashed into something and caused $190 worth of damages.
All our attempts to reason were then cut short when the owner came out and yelled at his son to stop talking to us. I asked him whether the scratch could have just gotten there from hitting waves or normal riding. He said no, and accused us of crashing into something, which never happened at all; the only things that Waverunner ever touched in my presence was the water and the loading platform. If what he says is true, then that scratch MUST have already been there prior to our rental. But how could we have noticed it during the walk-through?
He wasn't able to answer this; instead, he cut off all debate, saying, "when you're ready to pay, you can check out inside", then disappearing inside himself to hide in his office. Obviously I'm not going to walk away because they have a $1,000 deposit from me. The only other choice was to pay the extortion to get the rest of my deposit back, and they know this. These crooks can and will do this again to whoever they want, whenever they feel like pulling in some extra money.
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