Blue Water Boat Rentals - St. Joseph - St Joseph, Michigan

Seek Up Strategies

Slogan should be "We don't allow you to do that”.
Cannot go down 2 of the 3 river channels, cannot dock anywhere including restaurants, cannot beach the boat, cannot go more than 3 miles. Basically told that they are alerted on everything, and our boat will start beeping anytime we are not supposed to be somewhere we aren't supposed to be. Basically felt like a convict having an anklet on....
Asked for a map of where we can go then told they don’t have any maps of any of the rivers or lakes. However a few minutes later, pulls one out with creases all in it and tries to show us. No copies given. Go out, not too close to shore, because I don't want my anklet going off, we decide to throw anchor out and got it stuck, and when they came out to "help" us they blamed us for anchoring to close to drudging. Well, if they had any idea that was going on and actually cared, they would've told us not to throw anchor there, and just told us no, yet again. But also considering the fact that’s the place they told us to anchor at before we left in the first place. We ended up having to ditch the anchor, got charged for it even when they knew it was not our fault. Terrible!!! Felt like a 2 year old constantly being reprimanded. Oh, and to top it off, this is the boat they were originally going to put us on in the pictures. If you’re lucky you might get to rent it for $600+ dollars.
I honestly feel bad for the people who work there, I’m sure they have to constantly deal with telling people no to quite literally everything, except going to the lake. The owner was nowhere in sight, but the employees were in constant contact with them. This is NOT on the employees but on the owner. Imagine working there and putting people on the boat pictured…

Christy Pratt

First time renting a boat on Lake Michigan and also on a major holiday weekend. From reservations to day of, great customer service from Katie and the others. Boat was clean, ready to go and we had a great time. Would absolutely rent from them again and recommend. Thank you!

Matt Neuroth

This was just about the worst customer service experience I have ever had anywhere. The boat itself was fine, but the staff was rude and unfriendly from the moment we arrived. (There was one young woman who was actually friendly, but she was not a supervisor or manager and ultimately just stood off to the side looking visibly embarrassed by her coworkers' behavior.)

So, if you'd like to pay too much and be insulted by snotty teenage employees if you dare to ask a question, then I recommend it. If, on the other hand, you'd like to be treated somewhat professionally and actually enjoy yourself, I would avoid this place like the plague.

I'll note that we rented here last summer and had a completely opposite experience. Not sure what changed, but we'll never be back again.

Asif Rehmani

Nice selection of boats and good service.

Didn't expect to have to pay the fueling charge because I had never done that before at other boat rentals but I guess that's due to inflation that they are doing that now.

There's a quiz you got to take on their tablet before they will let you take the boat out. I thought it would be easy and logical stuff but some of the questions really threw me off. I passed but my friend actually failed the test and he's a pretty smart guy. So good luck with that ?

Prashanth Balusu

Very inexperienced staff and very poor customer service. We called and made a reservation in advance for a big group...they failed to provide details ahead of time and we were turned away the first time. When we went later in the day, we were then told we can't go on the lake. They could have made a courtesy call and told us. So we ended up cancelling...very disappointing.

Jacqueline Ocampo

I cannot, in good faith, recommend this company. They have been extremely inconsiderate with our time and gave us inconsistent information as to their pricing and availability.

We had a large group of 15 people interested in booking a pontoon in South Haven. I emailed the company at the address provided on the website and received a response from Kristina, who identified herself was the general manager of the St. Joseph location. She replied that the South Haven location would contact me. They never did.

I reached back out to the same email when it was apparent I would not get a call as promised. Kristina was very responsive and apologetic at first and took on the booking. She confirmed that the company had availability for a party of our size during our desired time frame.

After reviewing the information with our group, I informed Kristina that same day through email that I was ready to proceed with the booking. She confirmed that she would call us in the morning to get our payment information. Kristina never called us back and stopped responding when we reached out to inquire about the sudden lack of communication.

We later called both the South Haven and the St. Joseph locations which had no knowledge about our communications with Kristina. They informed us that they NEVER had availability for our party during the time frame originally promised. They also confirmed that their pricing was actually $100 cheaper than what Kristina originally told us.

When I explained our situation to the attendant at the South Haven location, she was very dismissive and uninterested in helping remedy the issue.

Needless to say, Blue Water Boat Rentals gave us the run around for days and it was not appreciated. It has hampered our ability to plan our weekend in South Haven as we were relying on the misinformation provided by the company's agent and it has caused a lot of confusion and distrust in the company.

Tom

Excellent customer service! Was able to rent a pontoon and the equipment to go tubing. The whole family had a blast!

MJ Higgins

I rented a boat for a birthday party and the experience was bad from start to finish. First, it's seemingly run by teenagers. Which would be fine if everything went smoothly (it did not). I was informed right off the bat that the boat I rented and paid for was never even in the water the whole season. Cool. So we got offered a different boat with less horsepower and less comfortable seats. Then after they "inspect" the boat, as we're out in lake Michigan we realize they didn't GIVE US A LADDER.... so me and my 10 friends had to shimmy off the side and army crawl back up and get scraped and bruised when we wanted to swim or pee. It was awful. I called immediately to see if they would bring us a ladder, but they would not. They said our only options were for us to come back or that they'd not charge us for gas. We took the gas option since it would have taken an hour to get back from where we were. Overall, bad.

*Edited because I originally said they didn't refund the fuel. They did. They are also claiming I never told them about this, which I certainly did... how else would they have known to refund me?