Lakeside Marina & Resort / Jim And Blake Dunn Bait & Switch - BEWARE of these owners, they are not honest men Eutawville South Carolina

We had a very bad experience with these guys. We were planning a weeklong trip to SC from Michigan and found Lakeside Marina online. They had a nice website and the owner, Blake Dunn, seemed professional and eager to help us. After many phone conversations and e-mail exchanges, we determined that we wanted to rent a pontoon from them for a week. The cost was over $800, but it seemed worth it. We were told that he had concerns with stumps and we agreed that we'd go over the map with them when we arrived and avoid the areas that they were uncomfortable with in the lake. We told him that we were renting a house on the lake and it had a mooring ball, and we intended to keep the boat there. Everything was agreed to and we sent them a deposit of $425.

We arrived on a Saturday and called ahead to set-up our time to get the pontoon. We were then told that the pontoon that we were to rent was being repaired and we'd be given a replacement. When we arrived a few hours later, we met Jim Dunn to pick it up. This was our first dealing with him. We were taken to the boat and discovered that it was absolutely filthy. There were broken seats, missing seats and the remaining seats were covered in mildew. When the subject of where we'd be keeping the boat came up we told him that we had worked it out with Blake to keep it on the mooring ball at the rental house. Jim told us that he wouldn't allow that and it had to be kept at a marina. That amounted to extra costs to keep it at a marina, in addition to the inconvenience of having to drive to the marina each time we wanted to use the boat and loading and unloading our equipment each time - it completely defeated the purpose of the weekly rental. Now, we couldn't just go out for a couple of hours in the evening when we returned to the rental house we had to make a special trip over to the marina. If it was a problem, Blake Dunn should not have agreed to it before we finalized our arrangements and sent them a large deposit. We tried to get Blake involved in the conversation, but Jim refused to find him to discuss it with us. We left to try to find a closer marina to the rental house, decide what we wanted to do, and to see if we could find an alternative to renting from them (with no internet access now). We determined that we'd rent from another company for a day or two and scrap the weekly rental. We called Jim back - by now a a few hours later - to say that we didn't want his rental. We had been told before we left Lakeside that if we did this, we'd receive our $425 deposit back. However, when we spoke to Jim on the phone to actually cancel the reservation, he became nasty. We tried again to get Blake involved in the conversation, but Jim refused to include him. In an attempt to salvage our vacation and not let them ruin the entire trip, we decided not to waste any more time arguing and to contact Blake when we returned home to try to get our deposit returned. We had dealt with Blake and were certain that he'd be more reasonable, knowing what he had agreed to and recognizing that the entire agreement had been changed by Jim. However, when we returned home and attempted to contact him, Blake refused to return our e-mails and was always "too busy" to take our calls when we tried to reach him by phone huge difference from our dealings with him before our trip when he was still trying to get our business. We finally got a little nasty in a message to him and got a call back. He was no more reasonable now than Jim had been. He told us that, although Jim had agreed to return the deposit before we left the marina, we had waited too long to let them know that we didn't want the rental. Jim was claiming that we had waited until Sunday - an entire day later - to call to cancel the reservation. That was untrue, we called a few hours later on Saturday and we have the phone records to prove it. But, Blake refused to let us send him that information and sided with Jim, saying that we had cost them money because they were unable to rent it out for two days. So, basically there was nothing more we could do so we filed a report with the BBB, and left negative online reviews with various advertising venues. I HIGHLY recommend NOT doing business with these men. You'll end up sorry. I've never seen worse business practices.

Wendy
dexter, Michigan
U.S.A.