almacdonald
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Sep 14, 2005
They must have seen up coming a mile away and thought "CHA-CHING! Tourists, how can we rip them off?" I'm sure not all places are like this but the surf school we went to definitely left a sour taste in my mouth.
A friend and I planned our trip to San Diego. I got to pick half the activities and she picked half. Well, one of her activities was to take surf lessons. So we did some research on the net and picked what seemed to be a reputable school, after all, there was a guarantee that if you weren't standing by the end of your lesson the next lesson was free! Anyway, we decide to bite the bullet and pay the extra for a semi-private lesson (2 people only.) We ordered our surf lessons online, printed out the recipt and though everything was A-OK. So, we get to the beach and the guy says we have to pay "taxes" now. I'm thinking this is a little fishy but not having the exact breakdown on the receipt, went along with it cause they already had our non-refundable $120!!! We also order the CD package promised to contain "Hundreds of professional phots of your surf experience" for which we were charged $50. So, we go to the beach, get all suited up and slowly 4 more people arrive for our "semi-private" lesson. Whatever, go with the flow. Long story short, surfing lesson sucked, at the end of a very frustrating surf lesson the instructor says to me, "you probably should have had a different type of board, then maybe you could have done better." ARGH!!
So we go to see our pictures and make up the CD, the guy says it will take too long to go through and show us all the pictures and to pick and choose so he'll just put "all of them" on the CD. Well, we saw a couple of pictures of us laying on the surfboards on the beach so we figured they knew what they were doing. When we finally got the chance to look at the CD there were only about 40 pictures of us on the whole CD! And to make matters even more frustrating, those first few pictures we saw and liked weren't even on the CD! We called to try to get some sort of refund on this picture CD cause it was over $1/picture, keep in mind there was no printing done! The owner/manager got all rude with us and said the reason there weren't more pictures was because we weren't any good and that the other people ordered a CD too and that's why there were so many pictures of them. (We had asked the other people in our "semi private" lesson if they had ordered the CD and they said no.) So, in the end, no money back, out $190 for the whole hour of misery. We could have spent a lot of time in Disneyland for that much money. 
Pacific Surf school = bad
A friend and I planned our trip to San Diego. I got to pick half the activities and she picked half. Well, one of her activities was to take surf lessons. So we did some research on the net and picked what seemed to be a reputable school, after all, there was a guarantee that if you weren't standing by the end of your lesson the next lesson was free! Anyway, we decide to bite the bullet and pay the extra for a semi-private lesson (2 people only.) We ordered our surf lessons online, printed out the recipt and though everything was A-OK. So, we get to the beach and the guy says we have to pay "taxes" now. I'm thinking this is a little fishy but not having the exact breakdown on the receipt, went along with it cause they already had our non-refundable $120!!! We also order the CD package promised to contain "Hundreds of professional phots of your surf experience" for which we were charged $50. So, we go to the beach, get all suited up and slowly 4 more people arrive for our "semi-private" lesson. Whatever, go with the flow. Long story short, surfing lesson sucked, at the end of a very frustrating surf lesson the instructor says to me, "you probably should have had a different type of board, then maybe you could have done better." ARGH!!
So we go to see our pictures and make up the CD, the guy says it will take too long to go through and show us all the pictures and to pick and choose so he'll just put "all of them" on the CD. Well, we saw a couple of pictures of us laying on the surfboards on the beach so we figured they knew what they were doing. When we finally got the chance to look at the CD there were only about 40 pictures of us on the whole CD! And to make matters even more frustrating, those first few pictures we saw and liked weren't even on the CD! We called to try to get some sort of refund on this picture CD cause it was over $1/picture, keep in mind there was no printing done! The owner/manager got all rude with us and said the reason there weren't more pictures was because we weren't any good and that the other people ordered a CD too and that's why there were so many pictures of them. (We had asked the other people in our "semi private" lesson if they had ordered the CD and they said no.) So, in the end, no money back, out $190 for the whole hour of misery. We could have spent a lot of time in Disneyland for that much money. Pacific Surf school = bad
