FishingBooker

Hey there,

I am sorry to hear about your recent experience with us. I totally understand your frustration, as having the trip canceled last minute is something no one wishes to happen.

The safety of our customers is always our top priority. Our captains are experienced professionals who make the ultimate call when it comes to weather-related cancellations. Sometimes, even when the skies seem clear, there might be other factors at play, like wind conditions or unforeseen changes in weather patterns, that could affect the safety of the trip. We're here to help and provide the best fishing experience possible, so if a trip gets postponed or canceled, it's because we want to ensure everyone's safety first and a fishing experience that won't be uncomfortable and disappointing.

We did try reaching out to you to discuss your concerns in more detail, but unfortunately, we couldn't connect. We're always eager to hear from our customers and find solutions that work for everyone.

I understand that it can be disappointing when a trip doesn't go as planned, but please know that we're committed to providing you with the best fishing experience when conditions allow. If you have any more questions or want to discuss your booking further, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. We're here to help make your next fishing adventure a great one!

- Niko

Dear Peter, thank you for taking the time to leave the review.

After a thorough review of your booking, we have confirmed that it was indeed canceled well in advance. Consequently, we have processed a refund of your deposit upon cancellation. To provide you with documentation, we have sent you a receipt of the transaction for your records.

We sincerely apologize for any misunderstanding or inconvenience that may have arisen from this situation. It is our utmost priority to ensure transparency and excellent service to all our customers, and we deeply regret any confusion that may have occurred.

Should you have any further questions or require additional assistance, please do not hesitate to reach out to us. Tight lines.

Hi James,

I'm sorry to hear you weren't happy with our service and would like to assure you that you paid the same amount for your trip as you would have done if you'd booked with Captain John directly.

FishingBooker exists to connect anglers with captains all over the world. We make it easy for customers to find, compare, and book charters, and for captains to advertise online. There is absolutely no intention to deceive anyone about who we are and we try to make it clear across the site that we're a service for comparing and booking charters and not the charter themselves. I'm sorry this wasn't as clear as it could have been for you and I'll see if there's anything else we can do in this regard.

Our Best Price Guarantee is in place to make sure customers never have to pay more in order to fish through us. We take reports of this policy being breached very seriously, and we followed up with Captain John to make sure the trip went ahead according to our policy. He confirmed that you paid his regular price for a full day trip, which is also what's advertised on FishingBooker and his own website.

I hope this clears things up somewhat. Tight lines and best wishes for more great fishing trips in the future!

Cat

Tom, I understand how disappointing this must have been and I'm very sorry that you and your nephew missed out on fishing due to your captain being double booked.

Unfortunately, at the time the captain didn't provide any reason for the cancellation other than "bad weather". This meant we weren't able to follow our usual procedure for helping you find an alternative in the area at the time.

I'm aware that you've since been in touch with our support team about this, and have also received your deposit refund as per our policies. If there's anything else we can do to help, please let us know – we'd love to help you and your nephew going fishing soon! Tight lines.

Steve, thanks for booking with us and I'm sorry your trip didn't go as planned. While it's great to hear your crew worked hard to make sure you had a good time, it's always disappointing when you can't control the weather! I understand there was some misunderstanding about returning slightly earlier to the dock but the general charter policy is to charge the full price unless the trip needs to be cut short for safety reasons, which is at the discretion of the captain.

I really hope we can help you have a more enjoyable trip in the future, when you can enjoy the full experience in better weather! Please reach out if there's anything we can do to help to make this happen. In the meantime, tight lines.

Alex, we're very sorry your trip didn't live up to your expectations. We understand from the captain that it was slow on the water when you were fishing, which unfortunately no one can control. However, we're sorry to hear you felt like you were just filling a gap and we'll certainly look into this in more detail with the captain to see how we can improve the service we mutually offer. We hope we can show you a better time on a future trip with a different charter!

Barrett, we're sorry to hear about the problems you had with your trip, especially that you never got to go out on the water. We'd really like to help you get on the water and have applied some credit to your account to go towards a future trip. You should have received a message about this in your inbox. Let us know if you'd like any help with this!

Hi Johnny,

Thanks for taking the time to leave a review – both here and on the listing you booked!

I looked into the case you reported in some detail, as our policy is never to change reviews to make listings look better. We understand that reviews are the best way to show an honest and accurate portrayal of any charter, and as you'll see on the listing you booked, there are a range of reviews from 5 stars to 1 star there already.

With this in mind, I can assure you that your review wasn't purposefully doctored to only include the good parts. Instead, it seems like it may not have saved properly, as originally it contained the rating only, without the text. After you forwarded what you wanted the review to say to us, we helped you adjust it so the text shows up correctly. You can see it here: https://fishingbooker.com/reviews/view/258054.

I hope that this now portrays a more accurate picture of your experience. If you do need to make any changes, please do let us know. You can do this by replying to the latest email you received from Johnny.

Thanks again for sharing your feedback – we'll keep an eye on any similar problems and work on making the review experience smoother in the future.

Tight lines,

Cat

Juan, thanks for taking the time to leave your review. We're really sorry to hear that you didn't have a positive experience with your captain on your trip. At FishingBooker, we try our best to ensure that we only partner with legitimate, experienced captains who can provide an outstanding experience for their guests. If a trip doesn't meet our standards and you don't receive the experience you were promised, we encourage reaching out to our Support Team so we can get to the bottom of the problem and resolve it with you. We also give customers the opportunity to leave a review sharing their side of the story for up to 30 days after the trip has completed. Please contact us through https://fishingbooker.com/contact if you'd like to discuss your experience in further detail, and we can only apologize that the trip and captain didn't match what you expected. All the best from FishingBooker.

Hi Keith, I'm so sorry to hear that you had a bad experience on your outing.

When you book a charter operator, an assigned fishing guide typically takes you out for the day. We know how important it is to connect with the person you're spending the day with, so I can see how this played a part in your overall experience. The charter operator did mention who you'd be spending your trip a couple of times, but I'm sorry if this wasn't communicated clearly enough.

We're working on improving the way you find out about an operator's crew on the website, so thank you for sharing your thoughts – this will helps us make the platform better for you.

As far as the fishing itself is concerned, I'm sorry that the day wasn't very productive. Fishing can be unpredictable, especially when the weather conditions are as rough as they were for you.

If you decide to hit the water again, please feel free to reach out. We'd be happy to help you find a fishing guide to suit your needs. All the best from FishingBooker!

Hi Janna,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I’m sorry you weren't happy with the solutions we offered when you contacted us about negative customer reviews on your listing. Speaking to you the other day allowed us to get a better insight into your concerns.

Just like you, we see tremendous value in customer reviews. They are a key reflection of your service, after all.

We allow customers to share their opinion whether that's positive or negative, which is why they trust us as a platform and why we can bring you more business. If we removed negative reviews, the positive ones would lose their value.

We understand that you were concerned because one of your customers left a negative review with no comment. Sadly, not every customer will take time to leave comments on their reviews. While this is understandable, I can see how it isn’t very helpful when you’re on the receiving end of such a review. Talking to you made this even more apparent.

Our product team is currently working on a way to make sure that customers leave more constructive feedback in the future. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this with us – this is helping us shape up a better solution for everyone.

Being here to support you is a high priority here at FishingBooker. In fact, this is why we expanded our Customer Support to be available to you 24/7. Together with dedicated Account Managers, our teams will always be there to help you manage your business.

We understand that you work hard to run a profitable business these days. As you know, we take a commission on successful trips only. But before we do, we invest in advertising your business online, as well as the tools that make managing a charter business easier for you.

This has allowed us to bring more business to charter fishing guides than any other online platform worldwide. We will continue working hard to bring you even more business, and we hope this will trickle down to many more 5-star reviews on your listing.

In the meantime, you can expect to hear from us as soon as we have an update on your reviews and the review process in general.

Tight lines!

Hi Ken,

Thank you for your review. I'm happy to hear you had a great trip with Paul and hope we can help you go fishing again in the future!

Tight lines,

Cat

Hi, thanks for sharing your experience with us. We're sorry to hear you didn't catch anything edible to share with the family. Fishing can be hit-and-miss sometimes, so we hope that you at least enjoyed your experience out on the water with your captain, even without taking anything home. If you want to try casting a line again, feel free to reach out to us. All the best from FishingBooker.

Hello Warrick. Thank you for sharing your experience.

We can imagine how disappointing it must have been to have your plans fall through on such short notice, especially since this was supposed to be your birthday trip. Fishing can be unpredictable, and we're really sorry that the conditions didn't cooperate on your scheduled date.

According to the captain, your day was met by not just unstable weather but also very low tidal movements. From what we understand, this would have made catching Barramundi almost impossible.

As you know, the captain did try to make the most of the situation by offering you an alternative – bait reef fishing. The other party on your shared trip needed to accept the alternative solution, but they unfortunately declined. While we can see how this must have been frustrating, I'm sure you realize that this wasn't due to a lack of willingness from your captain.

Once again, we're sorry things didn't work out this time. If you'd be willing to give it another shot next time you're in Northern Territory, we'd be more than happy to help you organize a memorable outing.

All the best from FishingBooker.

Hi Michael,

I'm sorry to hear you didn't have a good experience with us and would love to know more about the problems you've had. We work hard to make it easy to use our site and absolutely don't want to anyone to be charged for a mistake or difficulty.

Would you be able to share more information about the outdated information you found and the charges you received? Please feel free to message me privately on this platform, I'd very much like to help sort this out.

Tight lines,

Cat

Dan, thanks for booking with us. We're sorry to hear your trip didn't go ahead even though it seemed to be a beautiful day.

Could you let us know your booking ID and/or which charter you booked so we can look into this in more detail and follow up with you and the captain directly?

Dear Sylvia,

Thank you so much for sharing your feedback with us. I'm glad to see that you were able to address the confustion regarding fishing techniques directly with the captain and that you ended up leaving him a great review on FishingBooker!:)

We understand that sometimes misunderstandings can occur, and we want to ensure that every customer has a great experience. We're sorry for any inconvenience this has caused you. Your satisfaction is our utmost priority, and we are dedicated to resolving any outstanding issues.

We've made multiple attempts to reach out to you, but unfortunately, we haven't received a response. We sincerely want to address your concerns and make things right. Please feel free to contact us at customer.service@fishingbooker.com or visit our website https://fishingbooker.com/contact to get in touch. We are here to assist you!

Thank you once again for choosing FishingBooker. We value your trust in us and eagerly look forward to the opportunity to make things right for you.

Hello Lisa, thank you for sharing.

Once again, I’m very sorry that you had a bad experience with Captain Jay. I understand that the inability to repost a review on our website left a bad taste in your mouth, so I will try to explain why this happened.

We care deeply about giving our customers’ a platform to share their experience. To do this, we send review invitations to every customer that completed their outing with us. Our only requirement is that they’ve actually completed a trip. This ensures that the reviews are genuine and that the review process is fair to both captains and customers.

As you might recall, when you posted your review through our invitation, it was visible on the website. It was only after your complaint about the captain’s response that we removed the review for you. Sadly, editing and reposting your original review wasn’t an option after that point.

We understand how important it is to be able to share your experience. Transparency is important to us, which is why we want to thank you for posting this review.

As far as the trip itself is concerned, we understand that you and Captain Jay saw your outing differently. It seems that the one thing you both agreed on is that you requested to cut the trip due to seasickness.

In such cases, customers are in breach of their captains’ cancellation policy, so they normally forfeit their payment to the captain. We forward the customers’ deposit to the captain, and this compensates them for blocking out the date and preparing the supplies and equipment.

Seeing as your experience up until that point wasn’t positive, we decided to make an exception and refund your deposit. We hope that you’ll see the additional credit amount we awarded your account as a gesture of goodwill.

Lastly, the quality of our product and of our service is a high priority for us at FishingBooker. When it comes to the quality of the guides we advertise, our Legal team conducts detailed credentials checks for every single captain that lists with us. We’re proud to say that we’re the largest registry of licensed fishing guides in the world.

I’m really sorry that you didn’t get to enjoy your day on the water, Lisa. We thank you again for sharing this, and we wish you all the best.

HI Amanda,

Thanks for sharing your opinion, it was really insightful.

Our aim is to connect customers with captains and guides worldwide. As more people look for experiences online, we understand that advertising is expensive and hard to keep up with. That's why we offer a full suite of online advertising services to captains. Even though we start driving traffic to their listings as soon as they publish, captains don't need to pay any sign up costs or subscription fees. We only make money when a trip goes ahead and we've introduced captains to a new customer. If the trip doesn't happen for whatever reason, the deposit will always be returned to either the captain or the customer, depending on the cancellation in question and the captain's cancellation policy.

We never encourage people to lower their rates below what they usually charge – instead, captains are encouraged to list their regular rates. In general, we've found that captains who rely on a low price as their main selling point can struggle more than those who set a reasonable price and attract customers thanks to their great ratings and experience. If you'd like to know more about charging a fair price for your charter, you might find this article interesting: https://fishingbooker.com/blog/how-to-set-prices-fishing-charter/

Finally, we take verification very seriously and check the legitimacy of every new guide who lists with us. This is a goal we've been working towards for several years. We want to support legitimacy in charter fishing and make sure that only properly licensed captains get to take people out on the water.

I hope this gave a little more insight into how we work and wish you the best of luck with your business.

Tight lines,

Cat

Hi Chris,

Thanks for taking the time to book with us and to leave your feedback. I'm really sorry to hear about your latest experience and the fact that your guide didn't see your reservation.

The reason why your review isn't shown on the listing is that our system automatically posts a review stating that the captain canceled at short notice if this is the case. If you check back on the listing you booked, you'll see that this cancellation notice for your trip is currently the first review that shows up, even though there have been more reviews since then. On the other hand, custom-written reviews are reserved for trips that actually took place (as they're reviewing the fishing experience).

Beyond that automatic cancellation review, there's actually a lot that goes on behind the scenes if a captain ever cancels a trip. Our goal as a company is to help people go fishing, so we promote captains who have a record of going ahead with their trips. Each cancellation affects how well captains show up on our website, meaning you're most likely to see listings that have a track record of being reliable. And it goes without saying that if anything like this happens, the customer gets a full refund of their deposit.

Again, I'm really sorry to hear about your experience. I hope that you've been able to get out on the water with your friends since then!

Tight lines,

Cat

Hi Ulanbek,

First of all, I'm very sorry to hear that you didn't have a good experience with your latest reservation with us. I'm also sorry that you felt unable to share your experience with other FishingBooker customers. The reason you weren't able to leave a review was simply because reviews are appraisals of fishing trips and therefore can only be left once the trip is complete. As you decided not to take your trip, this meant that it wasn't possible to leave a review.

I'd like to share a little more information about the trip in question if I may. The listing you booked is with an inland river fishing guide who fishes the Salmon River. This river is run by a dam company, meaning the water levels can vary and, if water isn't released from the dam, the river can be too shallow to run a drift boat. On those occasions, fishing trips are done by wading – often resulting in huge catches!

Unfortunately, the guide doesn't get this information from the dam company until shortly before the trip, which is why he asked you to get in touch closer to the trip date in order to agree on the full details.

Previous customers have had a wonderful experience with this guide, but we realize that the information about the potential of wading should have been shared more clearly on the listing. Since you reached out to us about your reason for canceling your trip, we updated the description to make it more clear for people who aren't used to fishing in the area. We did of course also refund your deposit to you in full.

I can see that you had a much better experience on the previous trip that you booked with us – congrats on the big Striper! I sincerely hope that you'll enjoy lots more successful fishing trips in the future.

Tight lines,

Cat

Pietro, we're so sorry that your captain canceled at such short notice. This must have been extremely frustrating. We want to make sure you get to have a good fishing experience soon, so have shared credits with you towards a future trip. Check your email for more details so you can get on the water soon!

Hi Jeordi,

Thanks for taking the time to leave your review. We carefully went through all the communication connected to your trip to get a clear picture of everything that happened.

From what we understand, while the captain agreed to reschedule the initial trip with you, miscommunication lead to some crossed wires and unmet expectations on your behalf. However, we know this led to a negative experience for you and can understand any frustrations it must have caused. Because of this, we canceled the booking for you, refunded your deposit, and encouraged the captain to refund you more of your trip cost, which he did.

We've agreed to closely monitor the captain's behavior according to our internal procedures to ensure this doesn't happen again.

We're really sorry that you had a bad experience and for any inconvenience caused. If you feel like casting a line again, we'd love to help you have a positive experience out on the water.

All the best from FishingBooker.