Oak Cove Resort & Marine — Hotel in Crookston

We rented a pontoon from them for the whole day last Saturday for a bachelor party on the lake. For the price I suppose you get what you pay for. The pontoon was beat up and the speakers were blown, but hey it ran.

After cruising for a few hours we loaded up with the most people of the day (10 people) which is the max capacity of the boat. We were riding a little low but we weren't in a hurry so we took it slow.

Now the story gets fun. A storm rolled in and we were all huddled in the middle of the boat under the canopy to avoid the downpour. As we were pulling up to our cabin's dock the front end dipped under and we took on quite a bit of water. We ran from side to side and back to front trying to get the water to drain off but ended up having to jump off the boat in about waist deep water along shore. That was the end of that, we pulled it over to the dock, collected our life jackets floating around, and the pontoon was shortly on it's way to drying out.

After the storm passed, we headed out again with the same amount of people. This time we had learned a valuable lesson in balancing the rickety pontoon. We ended up at a friend's cabin down the shoreline and were chilling on shore with the pontoon tied up to their dock. Now the story gets spicy and is also the reason why I could never in my right mind recommend renting a boat from Oak Cove.

We were relaxing on shore drinking beer as we see a pontoon scream up to the dock. Sure enough it is the owner of Oak Cove and his son. His son jumps onto the dock and immediately hops on the pontoon we rented, removed the tied ropes, and started it up and floored it out of there. This happened so fast we barely had time to run down to the dock. We were yelling as the "Oak Cove Police Department" confiscated our rental an hour early of the due date. Once we had someone get down to the dock, the owner of Oak Cove pulled his pontoon up to the dock, while never even shutting off the motor or even standing up. He yelled to us, and I quote: "You sank our boat!". Obviously we were confused, especially because they literally just drove away in the "sunken" boat. When questioned about it, the owner just yelled, "We have video proof you sunk our boat, you can collect your stuff from the Polk County Sheriff back at the resort!". The owner then slammed his pontoon into gear and drove off.

The owner of Oak Cove took all our belongings on the boat as well. We had our shoes, phones, wallets, coolers of beer, and all of our life jackets on board. We weren't even at our cabin! Luckily we have some amazing friends and family who were willing to shuttle us back to the our cabin and to Oak Cove so we could go collect our stuff. We only sent a few of the guys got back to Oak Cove since we didn't want to start a fight and most of the guys at the bachelor party were very justifiably pissed off. When the guys got to Oak Cove a deputy was waiting for us, and stayed just to make sure we got our belongings back. Everyone at Oak Cove sure knows how to ruin a bachelor party and knows how to waste a deputy's time since there was obviously no crime. Nobody even saw the video too. Only the owners of Oak Cove claimed to have seen it. If they do have a video, I'd love to see it or see it posted here in their defense.

The icing on the cake is Oak Cove had the audacity to charge us for the full cost of rental and fuel. We had to pay full price for a boat that was stolen back early by the owners for a completely absurd reason, and they drove it full speed back to their place. I'm sure that was great on the gas mileage....

Overall, avoid this place like the plague. If you really need to rent a boat try to find somewhere else and if not just avoid Maple Lake. I cannot believe that someone who operates a business like this has somehow managed to stay in business.

0/5 Stars would rent...

Showed up 20 minutes early for a 9am rental, was told that the rental did not start until 9am. The man took his time getting things going, did not even have the boat in the water until a few minutes after 9. Boat was not in great shape. Got back to return the boat and was told that we wrecked the prop even though we didn’t get close to shore all day. The woman insisted that there was no possibility that the boat would go out in that condition and charged us for it. The man came in shortly after and said that the prop was already like that when we took it out. Got money back for the prop with “well I guess I owe you”. Overall pretty poor attitudes and the price of the rental definitely reflects the quality of the boats and service. Will definitely takes pictures before we rent from...

They were unorganized. They sent multiple groups out before us even though we checked in before them. They had one boat left and the boat ended up not working. They gave attitude and were not at all symptomatic for the fact we had driven an hour and a half to get there. We also overheard the lady asking the mechanic if we did something to the boat (we hadn't even left the dock🙄). It would have been nice to at least get a genuine apology. We will never...