Had I read the number of 1 star reviews I would have thought twice before flying up from the South Island to do their Hunter & Gathering trip. Firstly, booked a trip for the 6th of April. Jacqui calls to tell me after I booked that scallop season ended on the 31st of March and there has been a rahui on catching scallops since 6th of Feb. Okay, fine, but at least indicate this in your advertisements.
Second, the shop never once looked at my dive certification and Neil, the guide, condescendingly questioned where I did my DM certification and I called him out on it. Of course he didn't answer. This all happened while we waited for Mike to retrieve Neil's forgotten wet suit at the dive shot. That set us back in our trip by an hour. Not to mention the divers on board had to purchase their overpriced catch bags ($80) and cray nooses ($80) when in the advert it doesn't indicate we have to do so. I was notified of this AFTER I made my booking.
Another red flag, Neil said we could "dive individually or in groups, up to us." Out of the 3 divers that went on the trip, none of us were certified to dive on our own, but I appointed one guy (open water diver) to be my dive buddy. Of course things went wrong, my fin broke and the dive site they chose (Flat Rock) had some strong currents. We drifted about 100m away from the boat and called out to Mike to pick us up. It took him nearly 10 minutes to come get us because he was dealing with the 3rd diver (advanced diver) who I could tell from the start was very scared. My dive buddy even tried swimming against the current, but obviously the currents were so strong he went nowhere.
We saw nothing the first dive, not even one Kina, my buddy luckily found a cray at the very end of our dive.
Second dive, luckily I was able to pack away 7 Kina before my buddy and I got split up. Again with the strong currents, the visibility was less than 5m. So I waited 2 minutes for him as a trained diver would, then surfaced and waited another 5 minutes by the boat. I was well within the NDL to continue my dive when my buddy surfaced, but by that time I was called into the tiny little inflatable boat. I asked if I could continue diving as I still had more than 1/2 a tank left, Neil said we had to go. I was fuming at that stage. It was about 3:14pm when we left and I said to him this wouldn't have been the case if he didn't leave his wetsuit, I could have finished diving.
Out of a group of 5 people (2 guides and 3 customers) only 2 people came back with a cray, my dive buddy and Neil. I even tried asking Neil if I could buy the cray from him as I came all the way from the South Island for this trip. He said he had promised his wife dinner.
Overall, a disappointing trip. I called on Sunday the next day to express my frustration about the trip, only to be met with, "I don't deal with the admin side, call back tomorrow." by some lady named Jane? She was rude. So I called Monday and told Jacqui, but she already knew what happened and Jane? may have forwarded my message on. She defended Neil by saying his forgotten wet suit wouldn't have made a difference in our time which is a lie. JUST ADMIT YOU'RE WRONG. There was no reasoning with this business so I hung up the phone on her in more frustration.
Not only did they bring us to some small dive spot out in the open water, but they advertised for places like Little Barrier and Great Barrier Island, none of that happened. False advertisement and not a care for their customers and their safety. Don't go with these guys unless you're okay with cowboy diving. If this was a PADI shop, they would for sure be closed down by now.