This was first time I ever rented a boat today. But am shocked and still unable to reel out of insult and abuse by the rental manager or owner. Looking for my options what to do in a country like America where people out there physically and verbally abuse customers and charging for the service they did not provide.
I was called in rudely to report back in the office after the end of rental. And to wait another 10 minutes until this one person staff (Amanda) can complete her chores. Then she asked me to pay for 11 minutes of overtime for 2 boats. Though I only got rental time for 1hr 39 minutes that too due to their own fault. When I begin to discuss the matter, she told me that I will have to talk to the owner. No name, just owner that I was told. I was refused to be given his name.
Reserved 2 pontoons for Noon to 2:00pm (22 people). One more for 1:00 to 3:00pm (11 people). Due to being busy, understaffed, imperfect check-in process, Amanda could not handle so many people effectively and caused the delay in providing us the rental at 12:30. We lost 30 minutes. We still tried to be back by 2:00pm, but coming near the dock the procedure to get docked took additional 9 minutes. We only got 1hr 39 minutes of our rental time. But to my surprise above incidence happend.
They were supposed to check in people only for 2 boats, but they went on checking people for all 3 causing further delay. We were onsite at 11:40am, she could not talk to us until much later due to dealing with other customers.
Then came the "owner", a many times stronger guy than me and talked to me rudely and told me I better pay up the overtime of 22 minutes at a rate ($3) much more than their regular hourly rate ($60). They told me nothing about this policy, and the overtime rate at the time of rental. I was trying to resolve the matter being polite and humble telling him that no problem nobody's fault and we didn't know your procdures, can you forgive this additional charge. But, this person continued in arrogant language that even cops wont talk to criminals.
He verbally humiliated me then I to save myself from further humilation, I surrendered and told him he can charge my credit card and was in the process of walking away from insult. He came out of behind the counter and grabbbed me by my upper right arm and shook me briskly in a gesture of throwing me out of the rental office and shouted in hatred and anger as if he is really going to beat me up saying "get out of my property and all your people right away then you can deal with police when I am going to charge you for theft of service."
Insulted, humilated, and physically abused infront of many people, I did not want to grow the rift further and did not want to deal with police (don't trust they care for citizens), so I agreed to pay and signed his sales slip under fear when he can hit my face since his anger and gesture was at extreme. So it was a forced and intimidated payment - equal to paying a robber.
I told him - you know you are physically abusing me. He said, "Yes, just like a bouncer will do for not paying for the service". They failed to provide me service, charged me for the time they stopped me from using the rental, and the overtime of inaccurate 22 minutes was unagreed upon.
Their checkin procedure of 50 minutes was also rushing us thru and not explaining any procedures, simply asked us to blindly sign the forms, and rushing us thru the process - 16 adults rush signed all documents without knowing what we are signing for.
I am feeling so helpless and humiliated that can't shrug off the physical, verbal abuse and intimidation of having been beaten up.
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