Tahoe Sports Ski Run Boat Company — Attraction in South Lake Tahoe

Beautiful experience, terrible and strange service. First interaction: I came in with a family of 9, 10 including me. Right from the get go whilst renting the boat we were having a strange experience with the person behind the counter regarding questions. We would ask questions and would be a given a completely different answer. My family's second language is English -- Spanish is our first. Naturally, we had a couple of questions to ask just to be sure of our safety and experience on the boat. The person behind the counter seemed overwhelmed and scared when my family and I began to speak in spanish to discuss what the game plan might be when we arrived to the actual boat or simply just thinking out loud. After we did and asked another question she began to seem awfully uncomfortable (I'm assuming she thought we were talking negatively about her while my family and I thought we were having a positive interaction with the girl behind the counter the whole time we spoke to her). She then asked for her coworker to take over and walked away. We were a little stunned since we hadn't done anything to make her uncomfortable or feel overwhelmed, all we had done was ask her questions. It's just very strange since she ONLY started to look uncomfortable and scared AFTER we had spoken in spanish.

Second interaction: When my family and I's time on the boat was over, we called in for a worker to come and pick us up behind the green buoy's since that's what the service requires you to do to be able to get off. We had a female worker hop onto the boat and she was immediately arrogant, total bad attitude and vibes from her. The boat had been positioned in neutral while we waited for her to arrive and during the wait we were taking photos, when she hops on the boat she tells everyone to stop taking photos and wait for photos. Spanish is our first language -- so we thought she meant she could wait for us to finish taking photos. Obviously, we had misunderstood. She repeated herself with the most rude tone and speed the boat off making the one taking photos lose her balance on the boat. Spanish may be our first language but the same way you can have a tone in your mother tongue is the same way you can hear it with any other language. We had apologized for misunderstanding and one of my family members had commented on how rude her behavior was because it caught us all totally off guard (in Spanish). She proceeds to tell us she can speak Spanish passive aggressively. What threw us especially off was the fact that we were speaking Spanish the entire time she had been trying to get into the boat so why didn't she just ask for us to wait until we were at the dock to take photos in Spanish? We are clearly people of color, it is noticeable in our features and skin. It's not a secret at all. Her behavior was totally uncalled for and created intense tension in the boat. We told her that her behavior was beyond rude and arrogant and we had asked her why she was in such a rush because of the way she speed off with the boat while we took photos if we had gotten to the dock earlier than we needed to and she responded, "You guys are the last boat and I want to go home!" We were in utter disbelief. We couldn't even process that this worker had been acting like a child. How could we enjoy the experience when it started and ended on such awful service?

We've seen reviews about the extra gas charges after being suspicious about the people behind the counter telling us that we will receive an email after 15-25 minutes and we are on lookout for the total of our rental since we had gotten to the dock before our time on the boat was even over.

The only good experience from this was the actual boat itself, so...

Everybody from the Girls(Sam and Carey)we dealt with from the minute we got to Ski Run Boat Company to upper management including John the manager @ the dock are the rudest & most unprofessional group of people we have ever come across in a business setting! On August 30th the boat we were rented was unsafe & not working properly from Ski Run Boat Company. All of the gauges besides the RPM gauge weren't working, the Bimini Top broke off(right next to my head)so we had to drive 5-10 mph all the way back to Ski Run Boat Company which put us 30 minutes over our time. When we expressed our dangerous situation and mishaps with the boat they didn't care or have any concerns for the future rental of the boat. We expressed to management how unsafe and illegal the boat was and that we weren't asking for any compensation just for them to attend to it for future customers. The manager gave us a 5% discount but it didn't make up for the 30 mins(over $100) we had to deal with getting back to Ski Run Boat Company. After waiting 35 minutes for the bill they charged up for almost 21 gallons of gas(5.89 a gallon)for a total of almost $122.00. Being a past owner of 3 High Performance boats its nearly impossible to run through that much gas in such a short amount of time on a small boat with a low horse power motor. We walked away knowing that we weren't going to get any resolution from the manager so we walked down the dock only to encounter John the dock manager! We asked him to show us the pump or a receipt indicating the amount of gas put into the boat. John began to argue & show very aggressive and erratic behavior. We walked away with disbelief. We then tried contacting the owner Ron Williams numerous times to make him aware of how his employees ran his business while he wasn't there and to discuss the issue with the boat and the charges. After a couple of days not hearing from Rom Williams we tried several of his other businesses only to be told that there is no way to get a hold of him. We then left a message for the General Manager but still to this day we have not heard back from either one. Our last call to Ski Run Boat Company on Wednesday September 9th Lydia informed us that he will never return our calls. The last thing we wanted to do is to write a bad review and handle this matter privately but after reading all of the horrible reviews on numerous other websites about Ski Run Boat Company and there responses we knew that we wouldn't get any resolution with Ski Run Boat Company and to bring this to the publics attention. We highly recommend to NOT use Ski Run...

Worst experience ever for me and my family. Firstly, the boat we rented out wasn’t filled up all the way for gas. When driving it, we noticed the gears on the boat were rapidly going back and forth, not a good sign at all for one! What company let’s a family rent out a boat for 4 hours and not fill all way for gas! Secondly, we had rented our tubes to ride on the boat and not once did this company tell us all the activities we wanted to do for the type of boat rented would make our little to no gas (After we noticed) run out so quickly! Thirdly, a storm had came in and they did not call in their boats back to the marina! My family and I got stranded in the middle of the lake because of no gas! While the lake was super choppy and windy! Being stranded our boat was rocking heavily back and forth because of choppy waves, the radio on our boat was not even working either (Missing antenna BTW!) to call for help or the coast guard! Finally after multiple phone calls on our personal phones, we were able to get ahold of someone (while many people on these calls were giving us different phone numbers to call when we kept repeatedly saying we were having a emergency and needed to get our kids off the boat). All in all, they did come after 15 minutes to gas the boat up but only enough to get to the marina! The gentlemen who came to help us even said he didn’t know why they were still sending out boats in this type of weather (which, by the way, they knew there was a 20% chance of storms that day. The storm came fast with dark clouds covering half the lake) He even said they had a total of 5 rescues so far that day and that we were lucky to have missed the hail!

Once we got back to safety, we talked to management and they were actually arguing with us and saying it’s “impossible for us to call back 80 boats because of bad weather” and had no answer to the gas situation and broken radio. No protocols or manuals for safety for their customers. No life rafts on the boat. (Life vests, yes, but if they knew you had kids there needs better precautions taken on their behalf). After arguing they did offer to only charge us for 3 hrs and not charge for their RESCUE FEE! (Rescue fee? Pfft.)

Highly disappointing and traumatizing experience. I do not recommend this company to any tourist!

EDIT: EVEN THOUGH THEY SAID THAT THEY WOULD CHARGE US ONLY FOR 3 HOURS AND NO RESCUE FEE, they STILL CHARGED US! Unbelievable and just crazy! I HIGHLY recommend you read reviews of company’s before renting with them, especially when doing a excursion as...