We used a Groupon for our whale watching trip. We were charged a fuel surcharge, like the other Groupon user, even though gas prices are lower than they were when we purchased the Groupon. When it came time to begin the tour we were assigned to the smaller, open air (aka "chilly") boat. Since we weren't given the choice between boats like the rest of the customers we felt it was related to the fact that we were the "discount" customers, but we'll never know for sure.
Our tour was one of the few unfortunate ones to not see any orcas. Three out of five of us on the tour did see a dorsal fin of a minke for about three seconds. It was too far away to really tell what it was, but that's what we were told. The J, K & L pods returned to the area just a few hours after our tour. Because Outer Island Expeditions prominently advertises guaranteed whale sightings, we visited them the next day to ask if we could go back out to see the orcas. We were told no, that our brief sighting of the minke fulfilled their guarantee.
I'm not saying they did anything wrong - I just feel that the whole experience was so much less than what we had expected based on the positive reviews the company receives on this site. It's easy to look good when everything goes well and you just need to drive the boat out to where the whales have been spotted, but the true measure of a company is in its customer service when someone isn't happy with an experience that they paid a lot of money for.
Even so, I would have rated them a little higher except I felt the person that dealt with my husband and I on the 2nd day was impatient and condescending. Perhaps if our expectations had been lower (as this person implied they should have been), this company would have had an easier time meeting them.