I had the unpleasant experience of renting a boat from the East Bank Marina in St Marys, Ohio over the 4th of July weekend 2009. I called the marina on the morning of the 4th to rent a ski or pontoon boat, skis, and a raft. I was told that all pontoons and ski boats had been reserved and that they were not available. The salesman at the marina suggested that I take a fishing boat with enough horsepower to pull a skier. He assured me that the engine was fast enough to pull a skier, which was the entire reason we were renting a boat. I negotiated a $50 discount on the boat, skis, and raft due to the fact that it was already 10AM and the weather forecast was lousy. They rent boats in 2 time slots, 8AM-1:30PM and 2PM-7:30PM, I am pretty sure that they knew that the chances of someone renting the boat in the morning time slot was unlikely since it was already 10AM, so they cut me a deal for the entire day. I would like to say that this would have been a good deal if the boat did not give us so many troubles. Within the 1st hour we brought the boat back due to the overwhelming smell of gasoline, they checked it over and told us that it was fine. When we tried to use the boat to ski, it would not accelerate fast enough to pull the skier out of the water. After about 20 minutes of trying, we decided to cruise around a bit and use the raft. Within an hour, the boat would not start and the engine was making a whining sound even when the keys were removed from the ignition. This went on for a few minutes, when we were able to start the boat again, we brought it back to the marina. Our rental was until 7:30, however due to the trouble that we had with the boat, we brought it back at 3PM before anything else happened. When we got to the marina we explained the situation and the sales person just chuckled and said ""well at least you got to ski right?"" to which we answered, NO, the boat was also incapable of pulling a skier up. It was at this point that he printed my receipt and handed it to me. My reply was that this is unacceptable, we had nothing but problems with the boat and we could not ski! One of the younger people in the office made the suggestion that they only charge us for half a day, which would have reduced our bill by $50. They took off the $50 and then added back the inter tube rental, something that was already negotiated as part of the deal, which made the net effect of the discount $40. I told the sales person that this was unacceptable, and that I would take it up with the owner as he was not there. The following week I contacted the owner, Dan Manning, who assured me that he would look into the situation and get back to me. After two weeks, I called the owner back to find out why I had not received a follow up call. I was told that he had some personal matters to attend to and that he was sorry for not calling me back. I asked him what he found out and he told me that he would have done the same thing as his employee. He told me that when they checked out the boat, it was in perfect working condition, and if I would not have rented the boat, that someone else would. I asked him whether he believed that we were telling the truth about the problems that we had with the boat and he actually told me that he was unsure of whether I was telling the truth, which is offensive. I rented a boat that could not pull up a skier and had engine troubles, when I called this to their attention, it was irrelevant as long as I signed the credit card receipt. I tried to give the owner the benefit of the doubt as this was his employee that had made these decisions. When I talked to the owner about the situation, he insulted me and threatened legal action if I described the events that took place. If the boat that I rented would have pulled a skier and not malfunctioned, I would have done nothing. If the owner and salesperson would have done the right thing after the fact, I would have done nothing, but you cannot treat people this way. \r
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