back on the boards and like to take a moment to tell our story about utila dive opt.
setting aside our dive experience (which is of course the important part of our time w/ the opt)...
We scheduled ahead to dive an afternoon dive w/ utila dive opt when we arrived on utila. We unloaded our gear at the hotel and headed to the opt where we found no room was left for us on the afternoon dive boat. slightly disappointed, we just headed over to cross creek w/ our 10 dive invoice that utila dive opt printed out for us. Cross creek (dually managed w/ utila dive opt) asked for our invoice so they could bill us a discount rate for our 2 person 2 tank dive w/ them that afternoon. There seemed to be a bit of confusion getting us paid for our dive and in the 20 minutes of waiting to get things completed so we could head for the boat that was soon to be departing, the office forgot to give us our invoice from utila dive opt back. You wouldn't think this was too big of a deal....
next day, we completed our morning dives w/ utila dive opt and headed to the office to make payment of our dive package which we didn't complete the previous day b/c we were on short time to get to cross creek to make their afternoon dive departure. We headed to the office and explained to "the man in charge-(that's a scary thought)" that our invoice was left behind at cross creek's office the previous day b/c they requested it for reference during payment of previous day's dives and suggested that they either make a quick call to cross creek or look us up on the system.
The man in charge couldn't grasp the situation and fumbled through my clear explanation as to what dive package we planned the day before, the totals on the invoice, where the invoice was, and why it was there. After hearing him tell us we were making things difficult and that we shouldn't have lost our invoice, I left for cross creek to get the invoice. This was about 10 minutes into the simple solvable problem.
Upon returning, my gf was in "the man's" office, waiting for him to generate a new invoice. My efforts to find our original invoice failed so I waited in the waiting room since my gf had been dealing w/ the man for the past 10 minutes and he seemed to have a difficult time communicating w/ more than one person at a time. Apparently during the process of creating a new invoice the man couldn't work a computer. It took the man 20 minutes to create an invoice that took the guys in the shop 3 minutes to do the day before. When the invoice was complete he charged us the 4 dollar paypall surcharge fee that wasn't on our original invoice. yeah, it's only 4 dollars, but considering room wasn't saved for our dives the previous day when previous arrangements were made, considering the man repeatedly gave my gf a hard time about us losing our invoice when it was at his sister's dive opt office, and considering it took the guy a total of 30 minutes to create a new invoice you'd think he could accommodate us the 4 dollars that wasn't charged to us on the first invoice to begin with.
Well that's a rant. ...continuing onto the next day...we again completed our dives and wanted to make change so we could tip Marco, our dm for the day. We headed to the office where we found ourselves behind a couple who were involved in an unfolding situation w/ the same man. I'm not completely sure what the situation was, I just know that the guy didn't keep records of this couple's dives to this point b/c his only records were on a board that he had just erased. The couple also couldn't recall the # of dives, so the man said, "i'll just charge you for five because that's easier for me and you, and if I have overcharged you 1 dive then I'll reimburse you." -knowing that there wasn't going to be a reimbursement b/c neither parties knew whether they've done 4 or 5 dives. K, so again not accommodating the customer when the man in charge didn't know if he was appropriately charging his customers to begin with. Again putting his customers at an inconvenience if a mistake was made. Long story short, it took 15 minutes for me to get change to tip our dm b/c neither the knucklehead in charge nor his bookkeeper could observe another party holding a 20 in hand and quickly ask if what i needed could be quickly served on the side while the current fiasco ensued. I know we all do 10 things at a time at work and if someone's waiting we'll all quickly ask them if we can do somethin for them so they can be on their way if it ends up being something that will take only a moment. Nope, this knucklehead had tunnel vision, and poor it was.
why am I posting this? Because although we had a wonderful trip, this idiot acted as an idiot and then chose to blame us for something the an operations manager could've handled w/in 2 minutes w/o making a situation and causing anyone any grief.
If a manager who runs a business can't grasp various scenarios that must occur regularly through the course of business and quickly and effectively resolve them, then what kind of feedback can you expect to get from a trip report. Dive w/ utila dive opt, but don't pay much attention to the guy who thinks he knows what he's doing. He doesn't. He didn't have a clue when dealing w/ us, spoke rudely to us, fumbled through everything he did, and laid blame on us repeatedly when if blame was to be made it should've been laid on his operation's. When all was said and done after waiting for 30 minutes to pay we handed the man our payment and he said, "no, you can't pay me, you need to take this invoice and pay her." ---when they share the same office...he should've taken our money and said have a nice day...yet again, he made things as difficult as possible.
I know this is ridiculous for me to detail this lame story, to put forth the effort to detail the trials of making a payment and getting change, and to ridicule an opt in the manner above. If this was the most difficult part of our trip then i guess that's not so bad. I just wanted to write something honestly about a dive opt through our experience that wasn't positive b/c dive opts aren't just all about the diving...and this experience wasn't welcoming.
All this aside our boat and dive experience couldn't have been more enjoyable. Thanks steve and marco for taking us diving and showing us a great time.
setting aside our dive experience (which is of course the important part of our time w/ the opt)...
We scheduled ahead to dive an afternoon dive w/ utila dive opt when we arrived on utila. We unloaded our gear at the hotel and headed to the opt where we found no room was left for us on the afternoon dive boat. slightly disappointed, we just headed over to cross creek w/ our 10 dive invoice that utila dive opt printed out for us. Cross creek (dually managed w/ utila dive opt) asked for our invoice so they could bill us a discount rate for our 2 person 2 tank dive w/ them that afternoon. There seemed to be a bit of confusion getting us paid for our dive and in the 20 minutes of waiting to get things completed so we could head for the boat that was soon to be departing, the office forgot to give us our invoice from utila dive opt back. You wouldn't think this was too big of a deal....
next day, we completed our morning dives w/ utila dive opt and headed to the office to make payment of our dive package which we didn't complete the previous day b/c we were on short time to get to cross creek to make their afternoon dive departure. We headed to the office and explained to "the man in charge-(that's a scary thought)" that our invoice was left behind at cross creek's office the previous day b/c they requested it for reference during payment of previous day's dives and suggested that they either make a quick call to cross creek or look us up on the system.
The man in charge couldn't grasp the situation and fumbled through my clear explanation as to what dive package we planned the day before, the totals on the invoice, where the invoice was, and why it was there. After hearing him tell us we were making things difficult and that we shouldn't have lost our invoice, I left for cross creek to get the invoice. This was about 10 minutes into the simple solvable problem.
Upon returning, my gf was in "the man's" office, waiting for him to generate a new invoice. My efforts to find our original invoice failed so I waited in the waiting room since my gf had been dealing w/ the man for the past 10 minutes and he seemed to have a difficult time communicating w/ more than one person at a time. Apparently during the process of creating a new invoice the man couldn't work a computer. It took the man 20 minutes to create an invoice that took the guys in the shop 3 minutes to do the day before. When the invoice was complete he charged us the 4 dollar paypall surcharge fee that wasn't on our original invoice. yeah, it's only 4 dollars, but considering room wasn't saved for our dives the previous day when previous arrangements were made, considering the man repeatedly gave my gf a hard time about us losing our invoice when it was at his sister's dive opt office, and considering it took the guy a total of 30 minutes to create a new invoice you'd think he could accommodate us the 4 dollars that wasn't charged to us on the first invoice to begin with.
Well that's a rant. ...continuing onto the next day...we again completed our dives and wanted to make change so we could tip Marco, our dm for the day. We headed to the office where we found ourselves behind a couple who were involved in an unfolding situation w/ the same man. I'm not completely sure what the situation was, I just know that the guy didn't keep records of this couple's dives to this point b/c his only records were on a board that he had just erased. The couple also couldn't recall the # of dives, so the man said, "i'll just charge you for five because that's easier for me and you, and if I have overcharged you 1 dive then I'll reimburse you." -knowing that there wasn't going to be a reimbursement b/c neither parties knew whether they've done 4 or 5 dives. K, so again not accommodating the customer when the man in charge didn't know if he was appropriately charging his customers to begin with. Again putting his customers at an inconvenience if a mistake was made. Long story short, it took 15 minutes for me to get change to tip our dm b/c neither the knucklehead in charge nor his bookkeeper could observe another party holding a 20 in hand and quickly ask if what i needed could be quickly served on the side while the current fiasco ensued. I know we all do 10 things at a time at work and if someone's waiting we'll all quickly ask them if we can do somethin for them so they can be on their way if it ends up being something that will take only a moment. Nope, this knucklehead had tunnel vision, and poor it was.
why am I posting this? Because although we had a wonderful trip, this idiot acted as an idiot and then chose to blame us for something the an operations manager could've handled w/in 2 minutes w/o making a situation and causing anyone any grief.
If a manager who runs a business can't grasp various scenarios that must occur regularly through the course of business and quickly and effectively resolve them, then what kind of feedback can you expect to get from a trip report. Dive w/ utila dive opt, but don't pay much attention to the guy who thinks he knows what he's doing. He doesn't. He didn't have a clue when dealing w/ us, spoke rudely to us, fumbled through everything he did, and laid blame on us repeatedly when if blame was to be made it should've been laid on his operation's. When all was said and done after waiting for 30 minutes to pay we handed the man our payment and he said, "no, you can't pay me, you need to take this invoice and pay her." ---when they share the same office...he should've taken our money and said have a nice day...yet again, he made things as difficult as possible.
I know this is ridiculous for me to detail this lame story, to put forth the effort to detail the trials of making a payment and getting change, and to ridicule an opt in the manner above. If this was the most difficult part of our trip then i guess that's not so bad. I just wanted to write something honestly about a dive opt through our experience that wasn't positive b/c dive opts aren't just all about the diving...and this experience wasn't welcoming.
All this aside our boat and dive experience couldn't have been more enjoyable. Thanks steve and marco for taking us diving and showing us a great time.