Customer ReviewsforSouthwest Florida Yachts, Inc.

Our charter was 1/2022. Our experience with chartermaster Chuck was horrible. Chuck admitted to having no knowledge regarding any sailboat, including ours, and kept reiterating that with questions. He did not know how to turn on the engine, throttle up while out of gear. There was only 1 bumper on the boat and we asked for 3 more, he brought 1 with a very short rope. We had to attach another rope ourselves to use it. Several dock lines were broken, including a crucial very short line in the middle of the boat. We asked for a new line, he said "switch lines" and then switched it to the front of the boat. Short line was unusable during charter. He was very rude taking offense when our sailing instructor, Captain Joan G., tried to teach my husband the nuances of docking. Our trip was an ASA sailing class/trip. He was condescending towards her. He later "failed" Capt. Joan for her 2 charters after ours. Was it retaliatory? She has over 30 yrs experience and was ASA Outstanding Instructor of 2020. No way she does not know how to handle a sailboat. SFY took her charter fees and wouldn't refund them. After the charter he was supposed to meet us for refueling and water fill up. He never showed. There were 2-3 inches of water in the bilge. He said it was because he "washed the boat" with a hose but the inside of the boat was dirty. The boat was in poor shape, an old boat. The boat had several potentially dangerous problems including a frayed topping lift; nonfunctioning emergency bilge pump, un-detachable boat charging cable, nonworking boovang stopper and bow/foredeck lights. Other minor things - 3 missing light bulbs, 2 broken lights, several port windows did not open or missing screens, 2 missing cowls w/ broken plastic covers, and a broken bimini zipper. It took 6 wks to get our deposit refund. Office folks were nice. SFY should give Cpt. Joan back her money. Too bad about Chuck, who is going to lose a lot of business for SFY.

I'm sorry that Captain Joan has tried to damage our reputation for her own gain - again. Her actions completely go against the ASA Instructor Code of Ethics. I would advise you to reconsider taking your lead from her. The fact that we are just hearing from you after 8 months also coincides with the fact that Joan has lost her attempts to receive a refund from the credit card company. Interesting. It is shameful that she would talk her students into partnering with her to try to damage us in a public venue like the BBB as well as making some online disgraceful comments. We tolerated her bad behavior for months, but now that she is slandering us to our very own clients as well as to the public we will be forced to take action. We have worked too hard for 40 years to allow someone like this to slander our company. We will take whatever measures are necessary to protect our company from people who are attack us because they are called out for who they really are. It is sad when people try to tear down others to make themselves look better. Joan's actions are unacceptable. Please govern yourself accordingly.
Barbara H.

I forgot to mention that it is very disappointing that we are just hearing from you now, eight months later about the issues you had on the boat. We are here 7 days a week and we never received a call asking to discuss this matter with me or my staff. I'm sorry that you chose to air your grievances in this manner. Sadly, it is becoming all too common for people to hide behind an online post. I understand why people do that; however, it does nothing to resolve the issues at hand and only demonstrates a lack of civility that is prevalent in our society today. Small businesses like ours much prefer to talk to customers one on one. It would have been much more beneficial to you and helpful to us if we had been given the opportunity to look at all of the items in question while you were on the boat. I'm sorry that we were not able to meet when you were here. We wish you pleasant cruising.

It is surprising that the response to our review is a verbal lambasting and badmouthing of others instead of an inward look at how one can improve business. We did send a list of problems to Chuck during our charter via text We recognized that if we were to have those repairs done beforehand then it would have taken time out of the few days we had for our charter. That was not the focus of our review. The review (of which there is no time limit) is to let others know of the poor experience we had from our interaction with Chuck. Now I would extend that poor experience to Barbara/SFY based on the response.

After looking through our records we also did send a list of repairs and problems to the front office via email before we left our charter. We never got an answer so I am not sure why you would be disappointed about not hearing anything. We ended up going to the office to get bulbs

On Sun, Jan 9, 2022 at 10:33 PM <-------gmail.com>
Hello,
We have some problems with the boat that we would like addressed:
1. The topping lift is badly frayed in two areas and we are concerned that it will break and the boom will drop and damage the boat
2. There is about 2 inches of water in the bilge. The emergency build bilge pump turns on but does not reduce the water.
3. We need 3 - 12 volt light fixture bulbs.
Questions:
1. Is the Y valve set to holding tank?
2. Should we leave the fridge on all the time? Even when sailing?
3. Do we keep the battery switch on "ALL" all the time?
We plan to leave the dock at nine and would like these addressed by then.
We would like to drop off extra bedding, etc.. that we don't plan on using.
Thank you,
***** *----

It was clear from your first email that your mail reason for contacting us was to come to the defense of Captain **** for a dispute that had nothing to do with you and about which you had no facts.
It is clear now that we will not be able to make you happy no matter what we do. Many months have passed and it does no one any good to continue this conversation. I am sorry we did not have a chance to meet when you were here. We wish you good health and happy sailing.

We chartered a 40-foot catamaran with Southwest Florida Yachts for a week. Unfortunately, we found them to be breathtakingly unprofessional and frustrating to deal with. Not only was the registration process a pain (disorganized/all snail mail), the boat was in poor condition (the entry door didn't lock, one head reeked of urine, and the boat clearly had not been cleaned thoroughly), and the orientation was a hostile smattering of questionable information, condescension, and threats. From the minute we stepped on the boat, every question we asked was twisted to make it sound like we intended to damage the boat. Instead of answering questions, comments implying that we were reckless were thrown back at us, reminding us that our (10k) safety deposit that was on the line. During the test run the captain drastically escalated the aggressive commentary to the point where we all felt like he was heckling and second-guessing our every move. He also continued to pepper us with gratuitous reminders that we were liable for any damage. In an abundance of caution due to wind (and probably stress) my dad took a couple of attempts to get back into the slip. After we were tied up, the captain informed us that he couldn't give us the keys - but if we hired him for a few hours' training for a couple hundred dollars, then he was very confident we could take the boat because we were "really close." After reading other reviews of this company we decided this was likely to be a bad faith offer and opted to just stay in the slip. We then waited over 30 days to get our deposit back. My family has been sailing a 40 ft Moody for almost 30 years, and we sailed an almost identical cat around the BVI. We value safety tremendously. If we had been treated with professionalism and were found unfit then so be it. It was the way that we were treated before we were deemed unfit that was so horrific. With that much abuse I don't know how anyone could have performed well.

*****,
Needless to say, we were quite shocked to see your review some 4 months after your charter. As a Millennial I understand that you may prefer to communicate behind the veil of social media; however, we still like to do things the old-fashioned way (yes, including the dreaded "snail mail") which includes speaking to one another face to face when possible or via the good old telephone. We never heard anything from you or your father, the charter client since your cruise in March. In fact, upon seeing this a couple of days ago I left several messages for him to give me a call, but he will not return my calls. Hmmm . . . it's very hard for a company to assist a customer with an issue or complaint they may have if they won't communicate with the business. Putting that situation aside, let me correct some of the statements that you made with the facts. The most important fact is that neither Chuck nor our company ever told you that you could NOT take the boat out. This vessel is hardly an old, broken boat. The cat you chartered is a 2020 model and is beautiful. The owner of the boat takes great pride in his yacht and he entrusts us with the task of qualifying potential charter customers of his half-million-dollar yacht. We take that responsibility very seriously as we have for 40 years now. Perhaps you were not around when your father told Chuck that he was not comfortable handling the boat in and out of the slip where the boat was located. He said that he did not want to dock the boat "in the wind." I personally talked to him to make sure that he wanted us to cancel the marina reservations that he had. He never mentioned to me that he was unhappy. He did say that everyone enjoyed the amenities at the marina. I guess we will have to agree to disagree on who said what. It was your father who did all the planning and preparation for the charter and with whom we had all the communication which begs the question as to why you wrote a review and not your father. Was it because at age 28 you have a better idea of how complaints should be handled? I've heard that your generation is extremely smart when it comes to these matters, but I digress. So, I still need to know what is the point of your complaint? You said that "after reading other reviews" you decided to copy what several others were saying and post your review. Wow, how many reviews did you read - 3 or 4 for a company in business for 40 years? If I were you, I would not fall in line with some of those people as they were truly not capable of handling the boat. We allow hundreds more charters to take out our yachts than we restrict. If we do indeed "restrict" someone from leaving with a vessel than you can be assured that we are concerned for their safety and that of the yacht. No matter, I accept that we will be the "bad guys" if somehow you felt that you could not safely take the boat out on your charter and we CERTAINLY would have been the bad buys if we had encouraged you to take the boat out cruising and something happened where you damaged the boat. The saying "damned if you do and damned if you don't" definitely applies here. I have no doubt that you would have blamed us for that damage as well. No worries. We are getting used to this new "victim" society. That's not to say we have to allow people who want to blame everything on everyone else aboard our yachts. Again, back in the "old days" people took responsibility for their own decisions and didn't blame someone else. I hope that in the future when you have an issue with a store, a restaurant, or any other business that you will first talk to the owner or manager and try to resolve the problem honestly and maturely. I have not survived in this business for 40 years by not listening to my customers. If your father still wants to discuss this matter with me, I am happy to speak to him. I hope that he received our "thank you" letter even though that was sent by snail mail, too!

To anyone reading these reviews, this response really says it all. To the unnamed author of this response: While flattering, I am not a 28 year old millennial. I'm a computer literate 39 year old who understands the purpose of a review and doesn't want other people to have the horrible experience that my family and I had. Chuck was flat out cruel. My father had recently recovered from a year long illness and this was meant to be a wonderful family vacation. Instead, we were demeaned, heckled, and intimidated, and then told we weren't allowed to take the boat out of the slip unless we paid SWFY more money to spend more time being treated abusively by Chuck. We opted not to subject ourselves to Chuck's abuse on the off chance that we might eventually be permitted to use the boat. Because we were located at Burnt Store Marina (which is not near anything vacation-worthy and is currently under construction) we spent hours in the car everyday trying to make the most of a ruined vacation. We had to haul all of our valuables to the car on a daily basis because the door to the boat did not lock. Chuck was aware of the issue and did not fix it. We had to walk 8 minutes up the dock to the public bathrooms in the middle of the night every time we needed to use the bathroom because SWFY would not allow us to use the facilities on the boat. We didn't write reviews or call you because we didn't want you to hold our deposit hostage, like you apparently have with other clients who have dared to write bad reviews, and we didn't want to receive further abuse. Based on the complete lack of accountability that you demonstrate in every response to every bad review here and on other review sites, I highly doubt a call would have done anything. It would have just given you the opportunity to hurl abuse and blame us for your company's poor behavior. You didn't even reimburse my dad for the insurance that he paid for and then never used, even though he asked for a reimbursement. Its nice that you sent a "thank you" letter, but it would have been a whole lot nicer if you had treated us with professionalism.