Poseidon Fishing Charters — Local services in Saint Petersburg

Issue# 1: The day prior to trip, we received a phone call advising that due to weather and a damaged dock our trip would be moved from scheduled morning trip to mid-day and that there were no morning trips that day. During fishing trip Capt. Tom told us that there were morning trips as scheduled, but for some reason ours got moved. Not sure who to believe here. Issue# 2: I do understand that Captains wage relies on the tips mainly. But come one people, don’t tell the customer to leave the tip. I don’t believe that is good customer experience when Captain Tom literary said at the checkout: Looks like your trip has been paid for, now let’s process your tip… That already made me feel like there shouldn’t be any tip. Issue# 3 we ended up leaving a tip, Capt. Tom processed the card and said that it didn’t go through. After which he called gentleman by the name Andy(I believe) and Andy said that he needs to run my card again on a different system. Since CC transactions don’t post right of way I couldn’t see if the card was actually charged or not. Anyways, card was charged twice. I called Andy and asked to refund one of the charges since it was made by mistake, Andy said that I would receive a confirmation, but I never did. I was given a run around for about 2 weeks and at the end Andy said that there is nothing that he could do, he past my concerns to the owner by the name of Hunter and that Hunter should be handling the refund. I tried calling Hunter at the number provided and I received was a VM.

Long story short, the fishing trip itself was good experience. We caught some big red fish. But the customer service ruined the experience for me.

UPDATE Hunter, the owner of the company reached out to me and advised that, that is now how they do business. He assured me that things will get straightened out. Issue#2 Hunter advised that Capt. Tom recently started on the team and that they will make sure relay their expected behavior to him when out with Customer. Issue# 3 we received our refund for the double charge. So no complaints on that.

Folks, above is the perfect example that we are all humans and can’t be perfect. Overall great experience fishing with Poseidon Fishing Charters, except for the above items. But hopefully that was just bad timing after little hurricane. Here are few pictures from our good time inshore...

today 4 of us friends joined Poseidon fishing charters for a four hour shark / fishing trip. We chose Poseidon because they were advertising 350.00 for an Amazing 4-hour experience with an amazing captain catching our limit and having an experience of a lifetime.

Where do I even begin ….

How about right at the beginning when they falsely advertised $350.00 and then turned around and charged our credit card 450.00

How about arriving to no greeting whatsoever other than “let’s go” from our "amazing" captain Joey which were the last two words he said for the next two hours

How about a boat that was totally too small with absolutely no shade whatsoever. Had it not been an overcast day, there would be 4 paying guests coming home with severe sunstroke.

Nope not an exaggeration …we wish it was.

Captain Joey has absolutely no personality whatsoever We’re not sure if he had a bad day or he’s always so unsociable but do yourself a huge favor and be clear who your guide is beforehand. Having some many tours of every type of experience 4 friends from completely different backgrounds have honestly experienced the worst guide of any kind from any sport or experience ever.

To top it all off we had unanimously decided to not give this guide any tip whatsoever but in the end purely out of guilt or maybe pity we gave him a tip $60.00 which would have been over 17% of the actual advertised price. Our "amazing" Captain actually had the nerve to see that as insult, telling us that he always gets 20% (expecting over $90.00) …as he had one of guys cornered he reluctantly and somewhat fearfully consented to another $20.00 for a total of an undeserved $80.00 tip……little did our "amazing" captain Joey know we actually had gone to the bank beforehand and taken out $100.00 for the amazing captain we hoped we would have.

Now the fishing …..Yes we did catch one shark and one good size trout which saved the day but unfortunately it will be burgers again for dinner tonight

Do yourselves a favor and book elsewhere or at the very least ask a lot of questions before...

We had a great time...that was the unanimous feeling from entire family! we have been on some great family trips and multiple charter trips and this is the one we are already talking about scheduling again next year! From booking through finishing up our last day at the lodge, was a super enjoyable experience. The crew is top notch, no egos and everyone was amazingly friendly. They made sure our stay at the lodge was top notch and that we were taken care of each day fishing. The lodge is a hidden gem! Everything you needed for the stay included a large screen tv. Views were amazing and we had everything we needed for our week long stay. We fished a ton from the private dock with non stop action, but once on the boat was when the excitement started. Sharks, Goliath Grouper, Grunts, Snapper were plenty! We were able to see some amazing animals and fish when we were out there, Loggerheads, Dolphins, Manatees, Barracuda and dont forget so many species of birds...im sure I am missing a ton too. Brophy was our captain for all of our trips, and we will make sure he is again when we go back. He and Matt (deck hand) teamed up for one of our trips and made it even better. Guys made sure the family was on fish, fresh bait was on the line and all 3 of my boys from youngest to oldest had their share of battles with the fish. Real people, real nice, the kind of folks you invite for a beer and a bbq after a day on the water. Cant...