Description

This "business", Hawaii Island Ocean Tours is available on groupon for Kona, Hawaii. Unfortunately, we were one of the many groups that fell victim to this business scam and had our vacation time wasted. TLDR, purchased spots and booked an appointment to join their night time manta ray snorkeling tour. Received a text from a random number saying our scheduled time would be changed due to lack of customers. DEAVON FREEMAN (one of the employees) went on and was incredibly rude and further gaslit us by saying we didnt pay for parts of the reservation and that we would need to be recharged in person even though it was already paid for. He and the reservations person miscommunicated with each other! Wouldn't refund us after arguing with us saying we didnt pay, although we did and Deavon just didnt read the booking details in the notes. (We have screenshots) They cancelled our tour 3 hours before the already set scheduled time, the tour is about an hour away. AND the reservations person still said we couldnt be refunded (yet again) and to call back tomorrow. BUT when we already expressed that we felt it was UNSAFE to do a night tour with them (due to all the miscommunication and his aggressive tone) and asked for the refund, they said it was "impossible" and it "couldnt be done." This was such a crazy experience and has left such a bad taste in our groups' mouths. It's such a shame that as kamaaina, this is how we get treated and taken advantage of. We paid for a service, set an appointment time, and never received the service. You pay for something and get placed on standby even though they have "set appointments." Their reviews are still relatively high online BUT they are old reviews from more than a few years ago. Majority of their reviews on Yelp and Viator from within 12 months are reporting the same issues. We dont want the same thing to happen to anyone else.