Waterfront Adventures — Attraction in Kirkland

I am writing to express my dissatisfaction with the lack of clarity surrounding your rental time policy during my recent visit. When I rented a jet ski, I was not informed that any time after we signed the waivers was time taken away from actually being on the water. Due to the lack of clarity my group and I went to the restroom, grabbed water etc without considering our rental time would be cut short or overcharged. One of my friends had a booking time earlier than the rest of us by 15 minutes. She was told that she can ride with the rest of us and was never notified that she’ll have less than an hour if she decided to do so. If this was informed from the beginning, two members of our group would have headed out before the rest to ensure the one hour time on the water. Additionally, when we were handed the jet skis, my cousin and I received the jet ski that was supposed to come back before the other two jet skis even though that booking was for my friend, not for me. Since we were under the impression that we’re riding together and at the same time we didn’t bother to make sure we knew which jet ski was under which booking. Usually when renting a vehicle, the staff guides you to your rental. This did not happen which is why there was a mix up. Additionally, the staff yelled out the time our jet ski had to be back once we were on the jet ski, engine on and driving away. Evidently, it was hard to hear what the staff was yelling. I heard something with 12:45 which didn’t make sense since it was 12:20 so that would mean 25 minutes on the jet ski when I had payed for one hour. I yell to one of my friends if he said 12:45 and she yells one. That made me think we had to be back at 1:45. This could have all been avoided if the staff would 1. Make it clear that any time after signing the waiver is taken from your jet ski time 2. Hand us the correct jet ski and 3. Tell us of the time we have to be back before we’re on the jet ski. Between 4 of us we did not know what time we had to be back and we were charged $5 a minute for 30-45 minutes plus gas and tax. The total came out to more than it would have costed to rent for another hour. This again was not made clear as we were signing the waiver and getting on the jet ski. They do have this policy on their FAQ but if it is that strict of a policy, they would have reinstated their policy at the time of handing over the jet skis What is frustrating is the condescending attitude of the manager when we were bringing up the issue. When we had told him that we didn’t hear the time, he states “ my worker confirmed he verbally told you the time to come back and it’s my workers word against yours and I will believe my worker. He also states that this is the most common problem that comes up which speaks volumes to their poor communication skills and lack of transparency. When we ask to speak to the main manager, the manager we’re talking to states, “he’s over there on the boat, you can go talk to him but it will be a waste of your time”. Again he had no intention of addressing the problem. He was being utmost rude and disrespectful. These people do not care about customer satisfaction and have poor customer service skills. The jet ski was fun but with the way the manager was treating us, I would highly recommend avoiding this business at all costs. It is evident that they don’t care about...

I rented 2 jet skis twice from this location, both times 1 hour long (absurdly high hourly rates by the way, especially when comparing to Lake Chelan).

1st time, the waves were not choppy so we were going full throttle most of the time. They charged us $40 for the gas used.

2nd time, the waves were very choppy so we were going half the speed most of the time. We were charged $40 again for the gas used.

They didn't even fill up the tank and just defaulted to that amount.. It just didn't add up. Also, the owner's response throwing out a bunch of unauditable numbers really bothers me. Let's face it, you can throw all your unproven stats to me, but the policy clearly states that customers just "pay for" the "fuel used during your rental" verbatim. Despite the fine print, the owner thinks it's still okay to round up instead of taking the time to read the fuel meter like other locations. It's unbelievable easy to just read the fuel meter and charge the fuel used. That's good business practice. Just think about it. During the time span of a day, you have all sorts of people who like to just hit the gas hard for 1 hour vs. a person who just likes strolling around, enjoying the view (the view is absolutely gorgeous at SLU). Let's just charge both of these individuals $40 for the gas. That does not add up and you're allowing the slower individuals to pay for the speedsters' gas. I'm sure I can just let human greed and the maximization of business profits determine how much gas I used, or we could just not be lazy and read the meter.

Anyways, to further accentuate my point on gas price gouging at Woodmark Waterfront Adventures, I went to Lake Chelan and the water was so smooth, so we went full throttle for 1 hour and 30 minutes (this other location gave us a complimentary 30 minutes! (not at Woodmark Waterfront Adventures)), and they charged us

Rented a jet ski for an hour, and most of the experience was great. Staff were friendly, and come on, it's a jet ski on Lake Washington, what's not to like?

My gripe is with how damage is tracked. We got to the jet ski and were asked to look over to see if there's anything not marked by one of the stickers. First off, there were at least 15 stickers already, which makes me think if you're charging people for damage, you should fix the damage. Otherwise it just looks like a blatant money grab.

Then, knowing how much it costs to repair fiberglass, my girlfriend and I proceeded to spend the next 15 minutes searching (and finding two issues!) for anything not already marked.

And it honestly put us on edge for what we expected would be a fun, relaxing quick getaway. The stress of missing something because you feel rushed to make your start time, the fear that there's a hairline crack you can't see because it's in a shadow, or a chip hidden by water droplets.

If not for that, I would have happily recommended Waterfront Adventures to friends and coworkers as something to check out. But not with the damage policy as it is.

To the owners: plenty of other rental businesses have to handle damage in some way or another, and do so with much better customer experiences. If you're an honest business, learn from them. Improve your process. Your customers will appreciate you for it, and if you do, I'd be so happy to raise this to a 5 star rating because everything else was great. But this is a big issue.

Edit upon seeing the owner's response: Sounds like my review has fallen on deaf ears. Fair enough, if you're making enough money then why bother fixing what isn't broken. But my review did not come from lack of understanding of your process, and your claiming that it did...