We'd been wanting to take my mother-in-law to Italy for years as she is full Italian and never been, so I meticulously planned a trip for us and my sister-in-law, who had never been either. My husband and I love Italy and this was our third trip there. We try to do a private boat tour every time we're in Europe - Capri, Lake Como, Mallorca, etc, so we are well versed on boat tour protocol and etiquette. Total cost was 1200 euros, but wanted more time so added 2 hours for a total cost of 1400 euros, sending 600 euros as a downpayment a month in advance. 6 days before the tour, I was able to see the week's forecast and saw terrible weather predicted (rain, high winds, cold) for our boat day, and the first hour of the tour was to be full throttle from Monterosso to Portofino, with nowhere to take cover in between. I reached out to Sea Breeze with my concern hoping they would refund my down payment allowing us to free up the day and schedule other plans such as a food or museum tour indoors, but they said the weather can change quickly and we should wait and see . I voiced my concern that my mother-in-law was in her early 60s and a cold, rainy, windy boat day was not an option for us but in the end I trusted them and we continued to hope for the best and look forward to our boat day.
To our delight, the weather completely changed and predicted a beautiful sunny day for our boat day. We bought our wine and food we wanted on the boat and packed our boat bags the night before. We had an early dinner and did not get to spend the evening sightseeing so we could wake up early to catch the train to meet the boat. All parties were asleep when I received the email at 10 PM that they were canceling our boat tour. Confusion was quickly replaced by anger when I called and they lied to me REPEATEDLY as to why they were canceling. I am not an irrational person. I understand that they are a small business and unforeseen things happen and need to be canceled. But I am not okay with liars. THEY HAD THE NERVE TO BLAME US FOR THE CANCELLATION. He said he was cancelling for the weather, that there was still bad weather forecasted and they were canceling for my mother-in-law. WHAT? This went on forever, saying the weather was the only issue. I dug deep into each lie repeatedly to finally get to the truth. Second lie was a boat issue. Then FINALLY he said he had bronchitis and couldn't take us out. Apparently their 'blame the customer' strategy wasn't sticking this time. You don't get bronchitis in an hour. He knew he had bronchitis likely days before, but at the least by noon the day before. Having the decency to give us ANY warning would have been the proper, professional thing to do, instead of emailing at 10 pm the night before. I'm just so grateful I checked my email right before bed, otherwise we'd all be waking up to our early alarms on a vacation day in Italy to find out we'd been canceled on.
I had to wake my husband up and go to my mother-in-law's room next door to tell them our splurge day on the water was canceled despite beautiful weather. I spent all night trying to plan the next day as we now had nothing planned for a day of our extremely limited 10 day trip to see as much of the region as we could. We ended up taking the train to Portofino and having a perfectly sunny day with extremely calm seas and no rain whatsoever. Pictures of the sea conditions that day are attached for reference, as well as the many lies provided.