Top Deck Golf Carts - 11th Street — Local services in Port Aransas

DO NOT RENT FROM THIS COMPANY! Reasons (details below): Received a CITATION from the police. Stranded on a road from a stalled golf cart. Poor customer service. Top Deck’s website says, “Carts are not allowed to drive on or cross highway 361.” The main street of Port Aransas (according to Google) is Highway 361, but in town it is labelled “Alister.” I called Top Deck a month ago for clarification because I didn’t want to rent a cart that would be essentially useless. A Top Deck employee assured me that I could drive on Alister. Tuesday, July 13th: We arrived at 10:00 and were ignored by an employee with a clipboard who was receiving carts. We stopped her and asked if we needed to check-in. She said that she couldn’t rent out carts until 10:00. We informed her it was 10:00. She said we would check-in with her. Then she left without looking up from the clipboard. We waited. She had failed to mention we needed to sign one more paper inside. People went inside the trailer and left with carts. We followed her when she went inside and signed the paperwork. A cart was brought to us (about 10:45). An employee quickly showed us how to start the cart. He left. We waited for him because he hadn’t shown us how to use multiple features of the cart. He drove back and asked if we needed anything. We told him we didn’t understand how to use the Bluetooth. He told us how to connect and drove off. We still had some questions, but we left. Later that day: Their rental agreement states: “Golf carts are not to be driven in or near the water-bays, boat docks, etc. Please allow 50 feet distance from water.” What they really mean is this thing can’t touch a shallow puddle without risk of stalling. The beach entrance had high water and deep sand banks. Golf carts AND cars were driving at the edge on the left side to avoid water. While exiting, we drove through a few inches of water that must have splashed just right to stall the cart. We were stuck in the road for a few minutes until it dried out. During this, someone walked by us and said it happened to him too. Later on our trip, another cart stalled in front of us. This must be a common occurrence, but we were not informed. Wednesday, July 14th: We needed to go to CVS. We stopped at the intersection of Avenue G and Alister. I turned right toward the CVS entrance when I was immediately pulled over by an officer. I was given an automatic citation. I explained to the officer my situation, but he wrote a citation because it is mandatory. During our conversation with the officer, he informed us that the golf cart was missing a sign that is supposed to be affixed to the dashboard or steering wheel. Not having this sign is illegal. Those signs explain the rules of the carts (including not to drive the cart past the intersection of Avenue G) and says, “NO WARNINGS WILL BE GIVEN.” I left with a citation that could be up to a $500 fine. Friday, July 16th: When we returned the golf cart, we asked to talk to a person in charge. An employee we had not seen on Tuesday came to us. I informed her that due to their lack of compliance and misinformation about highway 361, we were issued a citation for entering the CVS parking lot. She told me I couldn’t have received a citation. We explained to her that we received a citation because we were not informed of where the highway started. She asked to see the ticket; we showed her. She then said, “Your rental agreement says not to drive on 361.” We explained our previous call to them about when and where we could drive on Alister. I also pointed out that 3 of the 4 carts in front of the building had signs that were missing or damaged. Her response to this was, “We are human and are doing our best.” They took no responsibility for anything. The city of Port Aransas has a lot of good information about cart rentals and expectations (including maps) on their website. This business could easily offer something similar, but they are too busy “doing...

The “short” version of this review is: Don’t rent from here…There’s too many other places on the island that rent carts at similar pricing. Don’t take a chance on having a bad experience here. Based on other reviews, there seems to be a higher probability that your experience WILL be bad…

The VERY long version of this review is as follows: I’ve rented from this location several times over the years without incident. In fact you may find previous positive reviews from me under their former name “Top Deck”. I’ve enjoyed the convenient location and the online booking that allows you upload documents in advance. Yes, the carts are a little “janky” and the Bluetooth doesn’t always work, but I’m not buying it, I’m just renting it for a few days. And a couple of times I’ve gotten a nice one that I really enjoyed driving. All the carts have gotten me from point A to point B, and that’s all I’m really asking from my “cart experience”. We camp on the beach in a RV and the cart is our transportation while on the island so we don’t have to break camp constantly. The husband will drop me off on the corner of 1A & 11th St. I’ll walk to the rental office while he goes to the beach and starts setting up. This has been our “routine” every time we have rented here. If we are arriving outside business hours, I call ahead and get the cart number and code. Again, no issues until this time. This trip I had a large group joining me on the second day so I reserved 2 carts. We were arriving at 4pm on a Wednesday, they close at 6pm. I did not call ahead. Husband drops me off like normal. The office is locked, no one is there. I call the “in case of emergency” phone number, no answer, I leave a message and I wait…10 min. There’s a guy outside at the cart rental place next door and I ask him if he knows anything about where they are and he doesn’t. He says that I should just keep calling the number, so I do… over the next hour and 20 minutes, I call 19 times, sometimes leaving messages, sometimes not. I also email a reply to the invoice I previously received, I email the address on the web page and fill out a “contact us” form. I tried texting the number, but it said it was a landline, so it didn’t go through. At some point I find a second number posted that I throw into the mix, calling that number (which has the same “in case of emergency” recording as the other number). I called that number 8 times. Then I try texting that second number, my iPhone showed my message blue and “delivered”. I was elated! After standing out in front of their office for an hour and 20 minutes getting sunburnt and bug bitten I had proof that a message had been received! I tried the “in case of emergency” for the 20th time and someone answered! The guy on the phone said that they decided to close early and someone was supposed to have sent me an email…(they didn’t). I got my code and told him I was NOT happy, and I would be back in the morning to pick up my second cart and they needed to figure out a way to make me happy. The next day I showed up to pick up my cart, and the is office locked and no one is there…I call the “in case of emergency” number and a girl answers, tells me to pick out a golf cart and she’ll give me a code…I was of course, hoping to speak to someone about my horrendous experience, hoping that part of my $1200 would be refunded, or I would be given the nicest cart on the lot, or even given an apology …not to happen. I told the girl the very short version and asked to to have a manager call me in the next 3 days…(they didn’t). I returned both carts, one at a time, no one was at the office (during business hours) those times either. I was hoping someone would “make it right” so that I wouldn’t have to spend even more of my time leaving reviews out there for other people…but no one has contacted me. So now I get to find a new place to rent carts. Maybe I’ll try the place next door; there was an employee there every time I stopped by...

Short version: Cart was super hard to handle turning the wheel to the left. I mean like trying to turn a 1980 semi truck with no power steering, hard to handle. Blue tooth worked maybe 50% off the time. We also had the slowest cart on the island. Pedal all the way down and we were getting passed by people out jogging. Customer service was mediocre at best.

Detailed version: My experience was not at all what I expected. It took me calling, texting, and emailing to even get the final confirmation of rental. I booked online and paid in full, uploaded the documents needed as soon and I got that email…then crickets for weeks. Super quick to take my money but I had no idea if they even held my reservation. I finally got a hold of someone the week before arrival who assured me I was all set. Ok, great…I was looking forward to a smoother process now that my worries were gone. Nope. I got there at 915 while I was out walking and asked if they did pick ups early. I was told 10 am sharp. Ok, great…I was fine with that, see y’all soon! Still optimistic, I showed up and waited in line at 10 and was helped at 10:02. I was told that Lacey would call my name in a few minutes. There were people ahead of me in line that hadn’t even uploaded documents or had just asked for a cart that day. I figured the company knows what they are doing and surely they have enough carts or they wouldn’t be giving more out. I waited for 50 minutes. I watched people come and go. I watched people who came in after me come and go. I watched people who had carts from Friday that needed swapping come and go. At this point, I have been sitting in the sun for an hour. I’m the only person left. I go back in and the girl looks shocked to see me. Lacey never called my name, I’m hot, sweaty, and irritated. They apologize and say they are just cleaning a cart. Ok great. Another 10 minutes goes by. No Lacey. Finally a nice young man brings my cart. He’s helpful, and runs me through the basic instructions. I’m finally on my way!!! My cart is terrible. At this point I am so disappointed with the customer service that I don’t bother calling and asking for a swap. Turning the wheel to the left was a task that required not just two hands, but your entire upper body strength and leverage from your legs. The blue tooth rarely turned on. The cart itself was the slowest out of any other vehicle we came across. Not that I needed to go 60 but it was really dangerous getting passed by trucks and even other golf carts because we held up traffic. I really wanted to swap but I suspected I got a lemon because, despite being one of the first in line, they gave my intended cart to someone else and skipped me entirely. I doubted they would help or even have a decent cart to give me. Super disappointed and will not be using ever again. There are many other golf cart places to choose from for next year. Top Deck Golf Carts has placed the bar low enough that I would be happy with slightly above mediocre at this point.

Sincerely, The woman still waiting for Lacey to...