Epic Boat Rentals & Motorsports Repair — Local services in Austin

The response to this post will likely be predictable. It looks like any bad reviews are posed as another boat company in the area by the owner to discredit them. I assure you that I have nothing to do with the boating industry and do not live anywhere close to Austin. I have also never posted a review in my life but after my friend was harassed by this owner after my worst experience ever on a boat, it is the least I can do. He also said if a bad review was posted he would take us to court for slander. I will post updates if so.

First, I busted my own myth. During the ride on our boat that was captained by Mitchell, we asked if he was the owner after some initial poor experiences we had. He replied no. We are finding in reviews that he is indeed the business owner. Interpret as you must.

Showed up an hour late to our rental slot. He called us and let us know we were at the wrong location (even though his website says pickup at the 360 bridge with address). Also told us he never picks up there. (Pro tip: Change your website and email templates to mitigate this in the future) We later thought he was just running late because the boat dock he said he went to was Steiner ranch but that is only a 20 min boat drive away. However, it took him an hour to get there so that didn't add up.

The boat: we didn't get the boat advertised. It is not the Moomba. It was a worn out bayliner that didn't have the bluetooth described with some wake boards that had the boots falling apart. The boat made wakeboarding tough because it couldn't pull us out of the water without sending the bow skyward. It doesn't have the v8 350 as advertised. Was some smaller mercury engine that had trouble starting at times.

The experience: Mitchell spent more time talking on the phone booking other customers, texting, or dealing with customer issues than captaining our boat. I can't tell you how many times we had to tell him to "go" or "stop" because he was on his phone. We had to keep telling him to go to pull us out of the water when he was not paying attention or let him know that we dropped a rider off 100 yards back before another boat hit them, or that he was headed right for another boat when het kept texting and driving. It was so unsafe. We would have to tell him to turn the engine off so people in the water wouldn't get hit by the prop. We got a captain so we could drink however none of us wanted to because of the experience. When tubing, the default was to drag us 30 year olds in a straight line for 10 minutes. This was because he couldn't turn to make the ride interesting without taking his eyes off his phone.

Lastly, after all this we chose to cut our trip short to get on with our day, Mitchell had the nerve to call us out via text for not leaving a tip with a harsh message. He also then did not calculate the total right after we left and charged us a higher amount without checking with us or giving us a heads up. We would have been fine with the miscalculation but he did this without authorization and went as far as threatening to sue us for slander if we left a bad review.

My recommendation: If you do end up renting after reading this review, rent without the captain and you pretty much avoid everything mentioned above outside of the boat expectations set from...

Epic Lake Rentals is extremely unprofessional and unreliable. I would advise anyone that is looking to rent jet skis on Lake Travis to spend a little extra money and go with a more reliable and professional company.

First off, we made reservations a month in advance and were charged $75 per jet ski per hour (a little over $300 total, which we prepaid). Great deal, right? When we got to the lake to meet Mitchell, he informed us that he had completely forgotten that we had reserved two jet skis. With that being said, one jet ski had a full tank of gas and the other one had approximately a quarter of a tank. We didn’t really think anything of it until we had been jet skiing for 45 minutes and the jet ski gave a “low fuel” warning. We began to ride back since we did not want to run out of gas in the middle of the lake.

When we got back and explained what was going on and when we ran out of gas, he immediately gave us every excuse he could think of. He said that he figured a quarter of a tank would be enough for two hours, but then told us that we should have informed him that there was only a quarter of a tank once we got out on the lake. I’m not sure how we were supposed to know a quarter of a tank was not enough when he had just said that he assumed it would be fine. His failure to plan and prepare for a reservation that was made a month in advance is no one’s fault but his own.

We were also greeted by several excuses about why we shouldn’t even receive a partial refund due to our time being cut short, starting with how a partial refund wasn’t even possible since the charge that was made a month ago hadn’t been fully processed. He also claimed that we shouldn’t be refunded anything since he let us ride the super-charged jet skis and that they normally charge more for those. We did not ask to rent a particular type of jet ski, and we did not appreciate how he acted like he was doing us a favor by giving us “better” jet skis.

He stated that he would cancel the old charge completely and do a new one with his new rate of $100 an hour per jet ski (instead of the initial $75 an hour). This ended up not being true at all and we were charged a total of over $600 over two transactions, one of which had to be disputed with the credit card company.

Again, this company is extremely unprofessional and seems to be incapable of taking responsibility for their actions. If you are looking to rent here, do not make the mistake of ignoring the one and two-star reviews like we did. Mitchell, please do not waste our time by attempting to demean us by saying that our review is fake or untrue like you have to other reviewers.

Update: We have been refunded for the original $334 that was charged at the beginning of April since our trip was cut short because there wasn't enough gas for the two hour reservation. We were still charged $100/hour per jet ski for an hour. Please also see the message the owner left me after FINDING ME ON FACEBOOK under my yelp review. Unacceptable behavior from a...

I made my reservation for 1 jet ski roughly a week in advance. The first red flag was that every time I called the worker he was always busy and promised to call me back. He would evidently forget and it would become my responsibility to call him back to continue to try arranging my reservation. This occurred several times. It’s as if I had to beg them to take my money. The day of our rental arrives and we drive 45 min to the lake at the predetermined location and arrive promptly on time. We scour the area trying to find our company representative but there is nobody in sight. I decided to call the company line but nobody answers. I even call another company line that I had been provided and still no answer. 20 minutes and 10 phone calls later I receive a text from one of the numbers and we exchange a couple messages and he gives me more phone numbers to try. Still no answers. As we were about to leave I received a call from Epic Lake Rentals 1 hour and 51 minutes after our scheduled rental time. They said that they thought we had rescheduled due to weather and that they had texted us. Absolutely not.

Since writing this review the owner has reached out to me saying that he is sorry for my experience and offered me a refund. In addition, he described to me how difficult it was out on the lake that day. They apparently had mechanical problems with 2 jet skis and he was preoccupied driving a boat rental. In addition, it was labor day weekend so the lake was incredibly busy. This is all true and I respect him for calling and trying to make this situation right, however, the fact of the matter is that it was still a terrible experience for me and the situation could have been rectified easily via...