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Maui Mishap
ChrisCrossings · October 2, 2000

Q: We had a problem with a diving shop in Maui that charged us more money to bring back our gear.

We had rented masks, snorkels and flippers for a weekly rental - all prepaid. I left earlier than the rest of my family and they returned the gear to the shop. Even though the shop was still open, the owner trotted out a clause in his contract that said he charged extra for returning equipment after 5 p.m.

It was shortly after 5.

The gear was being returned three days early from when we would have had to return it if we had gotten our complete weekly rental. My wife and kids were dropping it off on the way to the airport. He charged us $10 for the privilege of returning the gear after his "gear returning" time.

He was quite rude about the whole thing. He had my wife over a barrel so she forked out the 10 bucks and left. As a tourist on the way home, she didn't have much alternative but to pay it. It wasn't a lot but it left me cheesed off.

Being the sincere and polite Canadian I looked around for an agency with which to lodge a complaint against this business. I was mildly surprised when I couldn't turn up anything. No Better Business Bureau, no business practices watchdog for all the tourism business activities on Maui. I did have a brief e-mail conversation with a Chamber of Commerce but they didn't contribute anything to my concern.

Is it true that the average shmuck is on his own when doing business with the locals in this huge tourist market? Is there any place where the exploited tourist has a chance to feed back?

-- Doug Taylor

A: You came to the right place.

First of all, there is a Better Business Bureau that can help. The Hawaii BBB includes quite a few Maui members. Your dive shop may be among them.

Obviously, writing Ticked.com was a good idea. Our columnists know that the odds are often not in the traveler's favor. We also know that this business sometimes preys on visitors who "don't want to be any trouble," invoking onerous contractual clauses that are intended to enrich them.

I'm sorry that the dive shop was so insistent about paying a penalty. It was clearly out of line.

Although I wasn't present during the transaction, I can probably safely guess a few things. Your wife was most likely a little worried about getting to the airport on time and just wanted to be done with this. And she didn't care to provoke a confrontation. The dive shop probably knew her condition and took full advantage of it.

If you had already prepaid for a week, you should have gotten a refund, not paid an additional $10.

One other suggestion: try contacting the certification agency that the shop is affiliated with. Organizations such as the Professional Association of Diving Instructors and the National Association of Underwater Instructors have various dive shop classifications and can leverage their influence when a dive shop does something unethical.

You might also surf over to UgetHeard, a new service that handles your complaint for free. If nothing else, you'll direct some negative publicity toward the store in question.

Next time this happens, don't let yourself be intimidated. Just because you're polite doesn't mean you have to be a pushover.

Christopher Elliott's column appears on Thursdays. All e-mailed questions to ChrisCrossings become property of Ticked.com and may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion. You may reach Elliott at chris@ticked.com. Or visit his home page at http://www.elliott.org.