- Report: #502419
Complaint Review: Surf Academy - Huntington Beach California
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Author Not Confirmed
Why?
Surf Academy
www.surfacademy.com Huntington Beach, California, United States of America
Phone:
4249039500
Web:
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Surf Academy This place is a complete scam!! Booked a lesson online and they immediately charged my card, but I was never able to talk to someone..My lesson never took place!! Huntington Beach, California
I set up a lesson because I have always wanted to learn to surf and we were going to be in town for 2 days. My lesson was $75, which was charged to my credit card immediately. I wanted to make sure that we were on for the lesson, so I tried calling Mary (the owner) over and over to confirm because I never received confirmation, and all I got was a voicemail with a full mailbox. No one ever answered the phone and I called several times. I wanted to at least know my instructor's name and make sure they would be there, but I never heard from anyone. I also sent emails, which no one replied to. I showed up for my lesson and no one was there. I walked up and down the beach looking for an instructor, but there was no one. I know that this company is a scam. Please do not do business with them! I filed a dispute with my bank and they did find that this "surf school" was in the wrong and I got my money back. But, it was a hassle and I hope no one has to go through what I did. I was so excited about learning to surf and I was really hurt that I got taken advantage of that way. I really do not think anyone works at this place. There are plenty of legitimate surf instruction schools to go to. Do not waste your time and money!!!!
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Mary Setterholm
NY,New York,
United States of America
Owner's Response: no record of this lesson being booked on our system and instructors do not show up for lessons we have have no listing for.
#2REBUTTAL Owner of company
Sat, October 31, 2009
My name is Mary Setterholm and I am the owner of Surf Academy. I have researched this complaint and at this time I can't locate a party that requested a private lesson in Huntington Beach for which no instructor showed up going all the way back to 2008. I then tried to find a "Leah" in our system and the four out of several thousand names did not book a private lesson.
All students, hundreds a year as Surf Academy is possibly one of the largest surf schools in CA, are charged when they book a lesson. The
request pops up on our web calendar and an instructor "takes it" and
calls the student introducing themselves. the instructor also sends the
second confirmation email, which is clear from your post, you never
got. It is the final confirmation of a surf lesson. This would have
happened for you, Leah, if the lesson made it to our data base board.
Again, I do not show such a lesson at all...all the way back to and including 2008.
What would help is to see the confirmation email as we did not receive
one on our end from our charge card company. This
alerts us to a lesson. It rarely happens, but a hiccup in the
process chain can happen wherby a student books and is charged but we do not get a
confirmation email and the lesson does not show up on our back-end data
base at all. The bank deposit is combined with other lessons and no
names are provided, I guess for security reasons.
If you are able to show me the email confirmation you received and I can see it is our format, then I'd love to give you a lesson on the house. It is the least I can do.
Otherwise, I have no reason to beleive this post is legit. I hope you can help us clear this up.
Yes, in September '09 our office VM was full as I was relocating to NYC for grad school
and could not keep up with calls for a few days but I was returning
emails or forwarding them to my daughter Marion at UC Santa Cruz who
helps me carry management of the company. Our office contact information has now also changed due to the move.
I hope your trip was otherwise a good one :)
Peace.
