DICK dude SCREWS US!

We sell adventure tours in La Fortuna Costa Rica on the CHEAP and we do this so YOU, the traveler, can have a GREAT time in La Fortuna without paying an arm and leg to do so... but because of what happened yesterday we might have to reassess if it's worth it for us to sell tours in La Fortuna. Here's what happened.

'DICK dude' wanted to do 3 tours over a 2-day period. Money was sent via PayPal, vouchers were sent, the tour company was expecting 'DICK dude' and his party on such and such dates...etc. About 8 emails were exchanged and 'DICK dude' seemed excited and was pretty personable to us in his emails. So we were concerned when the tour company notified us that he didn't show up for his rafting tour. We tried to track him down but he had given us the wrong hotel. He told us he was staying at Arenal Lodge but in reality was staying at Arenal Observatory Lodge. Understandable mistake and didn't really change anything. D'Angelo finally tracked him down and also went out of his way to help him out after he missed his first tour. Here's part of 'dude's' last email to us:

"We are supper bummed about missing the raft trip, I didn't call you because of the no refund statements on you site. If we can get some type of credit or alternate activity that would be cool - minus any cancellation fee or whatever. This place is beautiful so we will be coming back. Looking forward to the other two activities. Thanks for checking up on us...and let me know if anything can be worked out."

Here's part of D'Angelo's email back to 'DICK dude'.

Hello 'DICK dude'... glad to hear everything is okay. I will call the tour company and see if there is anything they can do about the missed rafting tour. If you go 5 or 10 minutes early to your ATV tour you can ask them as well and see what they say.

*It should be noted the reason we do not refund money is because we pay a LARGE chunck of it to the tour company usually a week or two in advance of the tour(s).

Well guess what, he missed his next 2 tours as well but we didn't know since the above was the last email we received from him.

BUT, he obviously returned to the United States and disputed the ENTIRE charge of the tours to his credit card ($492.), telling the Credit Card people he never received the 'services' he had purchased. So our PayPal account goes negative while we work this shit out. I can tell you, neither us nor the tour company dropped the ball on this one. I couldn't begin to speculate why he missed his tours, hell, maybe he was hungover or his wife had a bad case of diarrhea, who knows, but I know until this thing gets worked out, we're kinda F**Ked. Since we've been working on our videos, websites and blogs, we've been living on a shoestring and a short one at that... Whatever. Just kinda sucks that we tried to help out 'DICK dude' and he doesn't even have the courtesy to contact us and tell us what happened or at least what he perceived to have happened. I can tell you, usually if a tour company screws up, clients are on the phone within minutes... also funny 'DICK dude' wants his entire refund since he pretty much admits to missing the first one on his own accord, if it was ours or the tour company's fault, he would have been more than 'bummed' trust me.

We'll try to hang on while this gets worked out because we're pretty sure we'll win the dispute. We figured this was going to happen from time to time after all it's pretty much the nature of the beast. But for us it's just bad timing since we're just getting started and don't have any 'buffer' money in our PayPal account yet.

I guess this would be a perfect time to say, "PURA VIDA".

btw- 'DICK dude' isn't his real name.... but it should be.

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