Starved Rock Adventures

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Terrible experience! The houseboat we reserved need many repairs before we could leave the harbor. This delayed our departure by at least 2 hours. The boat was out dated and poorly equipped. We were told that the required john boat rental would be waived. This never happened, Due to the needed repairs we notified the US Coast Guard because some of the repairs included no running lights poor not working, Heat/ AC not working and general repair of the boat.

I have been to a few boat rental places and none have been a negative experience other than this one. We arrived 30 min late to our scheduled appointment, which we were not told that we had to arrive early for or even on time. Then the crew took 30 min to get our rented boat ready to go - no one from their staff seemed to know what was going on. However the time was running from the minuet our appointment time began, which means we lost a total of one hour from what we paid for. Before we left the dock we were told to watch out for logs on the sides of the water, which we did. About 30 min into our boat trip, we felt a small bump, but the boat ran as normal for the remaining 2 and a half hours. When we got back to the dock, we were then informed that we had broke all 3 propellers, which raised our bill to $150 plus tax. By this time I was very upset, and went to speak with the owner. I could barely get a couple sentences in before he forced me out of his shop after calling me rude and clearly showing that the opinions and concerns of his customer were not a worry of his. We were charged 3 different transactions on our credit card and only one of them we agreed to pay for, the other two were left to what they felt like charging us, whether we agreed or not. One of the charges is still a mystery as to where it came from, so we are now leaving that investigation up to our bank to deal with. All in all we were charged nearly $500 for a 3 hour boat trip. I would STRONGLY recommend that you stay FAR away from this boat rental business. They are a money hungry business that do not try to please the customer in any way.

This was a very expensive, dissappointing experience. The houseboat carpet was wet before we got into the boat, which made it uncomfortable and musty. And to make matters worse, it was in the bedroom, so we had to bring a towel to bed to wipe our feet. We told Captain Bob BEFORE we departed and he brushed it off as if it was no big deal, that it would dry. Well, it never did and got worse as the weekend went on. Next, we were told that they would be in the office from 8am-5:30pm every day, GUARANTEED! Well, we called at 5:10pm, and they had left for the day, no help was to be had until the next day. The "mandatory" john boat did not work, so we actually had to PADDLE into shore with 1, yes, 1 oar. It took over 3 hours for them to come to repair the john boat for use and a fuse that blew. Needless to say, our food was thawing quickly. Captain Bob made degrading comments because we were all women on the boat and he didn't think we had brains. The air conditioning didn't work either. I would not recommend using this outfitter as the service was beyond poor and no discounts were taken off for our many inconveniences. He actually said "well it worked when you took the boat out" - nice service Bob.