Snohomish Balloon Rides — Local services in Snohomish

Beware - I would use another company who is customer centered not company centered. My wonderful employees purchased a gift certificate for me +1 to go on a Sunset Balloon flight for my birthday last year - so I thought I would use it this year for my birthday. I booked the flight approximately the week prior. I called and spoke with Marilyn (the owner) who quickly booked my flight for Friday the 15th at 6:15pm. Said she would be emailing me a confirmation and that the flights are sometimes cancelled due to weather. That was the end of the call.

I did receive an email which is posted below;

"Thanks for calling today. Your flight instructions and confirmation are attached. Please print this document as you'll be asked to present it when checking in for your flight.

This morning when you spoke with Marilyn she neglected to get your phone number. Would you please either email or call us with a good number?

We look forward to seeing you on the 15th! Thanks again.

Shannan"

There was an attachment to the email, but I didn't think of opening it, or reading it or printing it until the date got closer. So I didn't.

It became apparent by Wednesday night that the weather wasn't going to hold out for a nice (and very expensive) balloon ride. So I called the company on Thursday morning at 10:00 am to cancel my Friday 6:15 pm flight. That's where it went downhill. Shannan (the general manager) said that they require 48 hours notice to cancel. I said that I was never made aware of this and that it does not state that on my gift certificate nor did whoever did my booking happen to mention it.

She asked if I received the confirmation email, I said that I had received it. She said it stated it in there. Well it didn't state it in the body of the email as you can see above but the attachment did state it. I was never informed of this policy nor did I ever acknowledge or agree to it (since I wasn't informed of it).

I started in on the fact that it makes better sense to have a happy customer than to enforce a company "policy" that I wasn't even aware of. But even if I had downloaded the attachment or if someone had mentioned this policy - let's look at it from this stand point. (Which by the way, I told both the owner and the manager).

In order to cancel 48 hours ahead, I would have had to give my notice by 6:15pm on Wednesday the 13th. There hours are 9:00am - 6:00pm. So the notice would have gone to their voicemail. They open the next morning at 9:00am and I called at 10:00 am. So in essence the company only lost 1 hour of time to find a replacement. I gave them 36 hours notice but they only lost 1 hour.

Long story short - the manager said a few things to me that I thought I should share with you if you are considering giving your hard earned money to this company;

"I'm sorry you can't follow the rules" "How is it fair to our company that you want to cancel because of the weather?" "We get this all the time - people wanting to cancel due to weather" "It's our policy" "We have to pay the pilot $200 for a cancelled flight" "We can't fly unless the flight is full" "You didn't allow us enough time to find a replacement for you" "Do you allow last minute cancellations in your business?" (as if 36 hours is last minute)

Both the owner and the general manager shared in these comments. At the end of the conversation the owner wouldn't let me speak and kept interrupting me so I finally hung up. So did they fly last night in the bad weather or because they didn't have a full flight? I have no idea. They never called me back or emailed me. I told them they had a chance to make this right by me and then I would share my experience.

They apparently do not care about bad reviews or unhappy customers - let's show them that a bad truthful Yelp review is very damaging to a business and hope they can learn some customer service techniques in the future that will remind them why they are in business. To provide awesome experiences for the customer not to defend...

Covid killed our family summer plans so we booked a last minute unforgettable adventure for our 7 & 8 year old. Our scheduled flight was canvelled due to high winds and them not wanting to give us a 10 min ride due to the fast winds. We asked about rescheduling and Bob said they were booked through the end of the season, and chances of a cancellation were slim to none. I let him know we were available any time, and I woke up to a text saying to call in when they open as there may be availability! I called at 11:01 and talked to Bob who said they actually had a cancellation call the prior evening while we were waiting to see if we could fly, and we could take their spot! Of course we took it and had the BEST time ever!!! We helped our pilot Dwayne blow up the balloon and he let our kids help! He even let them go inside before it lifted off the ground! It was my husband and my second trip and our kids first - UNFORGETTABLE!!! Our kids loved it and so did weeee! We are ready for the Winthrop ride, and only hope to ride with Bob and Dwayne again!...

The entire experience was really nice and well planned/coordinated. The views from the sky are so memorable. You’ll need to be prepared to use your legs and climb up into the basket, and there will probably be 7 or 8 other people in there and not much room to move around. But everyone was extremely friendly and one passenger helped me get my legs into the basket because it was a little difficult at first. At the end, the host even answered my questions about the mechanics and features of the balloon. After all the participants drove together in the van back to the main field, the host very tastefully talked about the history of hot air balloons, and we had a toast/drank wine and answered trivia questions. You can’t really top that! The only thing I would have changed would be an increased travel distance of the balloon— we were told the evening flights travel farther than the morning flights which is the one I took. So you’ll probably want the evening flight if you want more view coverage. Overall 5 stars ⭐️ I’ll likely be back in...