I booked a two-tank dive for myself and my son, who was going to accompany me as a non-diver on the boat. However, I encountered issues with my flight, which was delayed, and I missed the connecting flight from Oahu to Kona. I tried to contact them by phone several times but got no response. Later, I texted them in WhatsApp and received a reply only after 10 hours that they canāt cancel the reservation.
I I do not recommend any diver to book directly from their website. I had other bookings made on the same day through GetYourGuide and Booking.com, which I was able to cancel without any issues directly through the app. However, considering that I couldnāt get in touch with them, their feedback was disappointing and showed no respect for divers, only an interest in taking your money.
Finally they charged me around 500 usd for noting and they didnāt accept a partial refund or any viable solution for this situation.
NEVER BOOK DIRECTLY WITH THEM!!!
Response from Host
Jan 2025
Hello again :)
We understand your frustration. Sometimes guests sleep in, miss flights, get sick, or otherwise 'miss the boat'. As in your case, we will always look for a reasonable solution.
The nature of boating business necessitates some requirements to run efficiently.
We do maintain cancellation policies for a reason; it is expensive to fuel and staff a boat, and if we did not operate with some basic, industry-standard business practices, we would not be able to remain in this business we love.
We do make full refunds when cancellations are outside of our control like for weather and water conditions. While not our policy, which states, "full refunds are available with cancellations 48 hours prior to charter time", we did attempt to reschedule your dives at our expense.
Since, notice of your cancellation was received less than twelve hours before your scheduled charter and in the middle of the night, we thought this a fair and reasonable solution.
A call, text, or email received prior to your departure time would have been accepted to cancel and fully refund your charter.
Upon returning to the office, we sent a response 10 hours after your 9pm message the night before your 8am charter.
Again, we understand your frustration, sometimes visitors plan too much on too many islands or too tight of turn arounds, and we do everything we can to accommodate while maintaining an integrous operation.
And again, if the missed flight was at no fault of your own, we again suggest you look to the airline or travelers insurance for another remedy since we were unable to grant your request to provide diving on Oahu (we are on Big Island only), or to issue a full refund for two divers we only discovered to be cancelling as we were loading the boat.
We believe we have provided both clear and reasonable policies as well as fair and viable solutions for you having missed your flight.
It might not be possible to make everyone happy all the time, but we sure try!
All aloha to you, friend and to many happy dives,
ALD