Vancouver, Canada

Disappointing

I recently booked this experience for my family and I wanted to provide more specific feedback regarding my recent booking of a Seanet cruise through Thirdhome. In particular, the goal is to provide other travelers with additional detail so that other travelers can determine for themselves the nature of the circumstances, how my group and I were treated, and the Seanet booking process. My principal concerns are both the change of the location for pickup after airfare had been purchased but also the date and time of departure on the date of the sail. Additionally, there were issues about the misapplication of my damage deposit toward undisclosed and hidden fees as well as the other attempts at overbilling on the part of Seanet. On September 19th, we were given a check in time of 9 am and a check out time before noon. As it turns out while the date we were provided was adjusted to the 23rd (we were okay with that) we were also pushed from a 9am check in to a 3pm check in so that Seanet could accommodate another charter from another guest. Again, we did not board till 3pm. We booked 5 airline tickets. On the 21st we had the rug pulled out from under us and were told that we had to do Victoria to Victoria even though we had already purchased tickets to fly home from Seattle. The rational for this was that the owner changed his mind and “didn’t want the boat going into the states.” However, according to conversations with the Captain when we were on the boat it had just come from Seattle on the charter that had disembarked on the date of our arrival. We did our best to accommodate the owners mandate and purchased new return portions of our tickets. No gesture of compensating us for this was offered. The time of day for the departure was also important in that since we were told 9am we were only able to purchase tickets that arrived a day early and involved staying a local hotel so we could be on time to our departure. Had Seanet provided accurate information regarding the departure at 3pm we would have planned to arrive the day of the depature as well. Perhaps the most egregious or flagrant issue we dealt with Seanet was the overbilling. While the agreement for the Seanet charter with thirdhome is 3 key per day plus exchange fee and one thousand dollars per day for provisioning and charter costs, Seanet submitted the below invoice for two thousand dollars per day plus damage deposit for a total of close to $7000 for a 3 NIGHT CRUISE. I tried to have the rectify the billing but they resolutely adhered to this amount even though it was not accurate. I had to turn to my account representative at thirdhome to get this resolved which she did. They then sent a revised invoice for $4600 which included $600 for a chef, $1000 per night for the 3 nights and $1000 damage deposit. When I vacated and requested the return of my damage deposit and notified them that no private chef had been offered they sent me an invoice which included fees such as boat washing, laundry, etc. These were fees that had been covered vis a vis my 3 keys spent per day along with the thousand dollars per day as had been advertised by thirdhome. In terms of the cruise or the experience we had with Seanet, this was a disappointment on almost every level. Every time we requested an itinerary from Seanet they told us just to talk to the Captain on arrival. When we did this, it turned out the Captain did not want this responsibility and had us planned to stay at docks every night. Despite our requests, we spent 2 of the 3 nights at marinas waking up to the sounds of other owners or staff pressure washing their boats next door or boats gassing up. It was not the private yacht experience we had hoped for or led to believe was offered. Apart from the trip itself falling short, the experience we had leading up to the trip was disorganized, chaotic and misleading. I have to underscore how unfairly we feel we were treated throughout in that we got the impression as thirdhome guests we were the travelers who were forced to make adjustments to our travel plans to accommodate the members of seanet who had first priority, even after we had booked tickets and made plans. The attempts at overbilling were also unacceptable and can be proven not to have been simple mistakes as I spoke to them several times on how the invoice did not comport with the advertised offer for the daily rate on thirdhome and they absolutely refused to make an adjustment. It was not until I contacted thirdhome that I then received a revised invoice a few hours later. This invoice reflected a private chef as a separate charge (this person turned out to be just the second member of the crew we had already paid for as part of our key and daily rate) and included a large damage deposit. While we paid these amounts, it was not until we boarded that we found out that the steward was also operating as the “private chef” and that the damage deposit was actually not for use for damage but actually was applied toward washing the boat and cleaning the linens and other charges we were never notified of or prepared for. It is both unconscionable and even illegal to apply a damage deposit toward fees other than damage. In particular with this case it was applied toward arbitrary additional expenses we were never notified of before the rental. Hope this helps other travelers. ”