Sydney Boat Hire

I wasn't going to post this publicly, but after the dismissive response over email noting basically 'refer to terms and conditions' I feel obliged to.

The weather was obviously quite bad with rain and winds when we went, but it was deemed safe to proceed so we went ahead with the trip. No issues here and understand weather is not something that can be controlled.

The boat picked us up from Barangaroo and docked at the cove around the corner from the Opera House, where it stayed docked stationary for ~3.5 hours. The trip from Barangaroo took about 10 minutes. On the way back the boat went the long way and went through Woolloomooloo wharf which took about 30 minutes, but didn't dock anywhere else.

We were quite disappointed that the boat only docked at one spot so close to where we were picked up from, and it didn't feel like the usual boat experience that we were hoping for or expecting. The captains were very nice and experienced and informed us that wind conditions made it difficult to travel elsewhere.

We understand that wind and weather conditions may have made it unsafe to travel to other spots, and that these things are unpredictable. If that is the case though and a normal experience can't be offered/isn't possible, then we felt the trip should have probably been postponed in its entirety. If the trip is unsafe to have a normal experience as is usually the case, then we feel we should have been offered to reschedule or at least a discount for a trip which travels minimally and only docks at a single spot.

We also understand there are terms and conditions which say the boat travels in any weather - we get this. But again if it is unsafe to travel in a normal way with the conditions (as we have done on other boat trips in the past), then we feel we shouldn't be required to still pay full price for that limited experience. We felt that we essentially paid almost $2000 to travel a few hundred metres and remain stationary for 3.5 hours in one spot. We could have just taken a water taxi and stopped at the Botanical Gardens for a picnic - same outcome.

Overall, we just feel that we didn't get our money worth for the boat trip at all. Customer service told us 'bad luck, refer conditions'.