Robert D.

FB operates most closely related to an automated travel agency. What this overseas company has done is create an algorithm that advertises fishing charters and in exchange they charge the fishing charter a percentage of the trip fee and tells the customer it is a "deposit" for the trip. They do forward that fee to the Captain if the customer is a no show. FB then uses a lot of those funds to dominate the advertising on Google, thus you see them first.

To list on FB you have to pick a percentage of your trip fee that you are willing to give up. The higher the percentage that you give up the higher you are placed on the listings. Thus if you search a certain locale you may well see listings for captains from out of the area because they have agreed to give up a larger portion of their fee. They are either going to have to travel to you or they are going to ask you to travel to them.

When you book with FB there is no human interaction, it is all artificial intelligence that books you trip. The captain gets a text alert and an email stating that you have requested the trip. FB gives the captain 24 hours to answer the request or it expires. On a rare occasion and IF someone is working at FB the captain will sometimes get a phone call from them asking about short term notice request. BEWARE of any listings on FB that offer "INSTANT BOOK". Very few if any Captains use FB's calendar as their primary calendar. There is a good chance that if you use INSTANT BOOK, you will not get the Captain that you are requesting. I know of Captains that use that feature and they often use unlicensed boats to fill your trip because they were already booked that day and just did not update their calendar.

The captain that you are requesting gets limited information until and unless he accepts the trip. Their internal messaging system works well but it is highly monitored. If your captain is on the road or on the water and wants to talk, he cannot send you his number through the messaging system because that message will get blocked by their filters. Here's the kicker... it has been my experience that FB will only allow a captain to be signed in to their system from a single device at a time. So if he/she is away from home but left the laptop signed in, you cannot sign into the system to see or respond to the customer's message. The same goes for trip request, they are difficult to respond to at certain times. Oh and as someone that makes them money it has been difficult to get any answers to the tech issues from them. So the customer service is bad on both ends of this deal.

FB is a static listing. As a listed captain I cannot simply go on and change my listing. I have to either write something up or ask for an edit and wait for them to go in and edit the listing. So if a departure time changes or a boat goes down making that public on this system is not as easy as writing this review.

Again know that the "deposit" you are paying them is their fee for the booking service. The captain does not see that money. I have not had any customers complain to me about not getting the deposit refunded but I have had to get involved for a couple of them.

Overall I believe that they have been good from the Captain side simply because they spend so much money advertising. They are certainly planting the seed of fishing in the minds of some that may not have existed. However from the customer side I could not imagine using a service like this. In my life I used Expedia one time to book a room and it was a horrible experience. I, like you should use this service as a lead, then get on the net and do further research, I can promise you that you will get a lot more out of personal interaction with someone that you are planning to do business with. Anytime that you put a third party into a business arrangement you are adding one more chance for confusion.