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Why You Should Include Warnings in Rules and Rental Agreements
Are there known dangers regarding flora, fauna, weather, danger areas, or just plain crazy neighbors in your area?
Below is a genuine event conveyed to me in a letter delivered after vacationers rented my property. It might give you something to consider when renting your vacation unit. If you are not familiar with the area where your vacation rental is situated, this might also compel you to investigate and find out as much as you can about the local area or region in which your property is located.
Just wanted to let you know we enjoyed the Condo so very much. Thank you again! It was a great week, we only had really one bad day and that was Tues when we rented a Pontoon Boat and a Jet Ski from Boogies and got caught out in the bay in a horrendous storm that came out of nowhere. What took us 20 min to get 5 miles out, took us 2 hours to get back in and on top of it, the water did $900 damage to the Pontoon. Luckily my parents Homeowner's Insurance covered all but $250 of it.
Needless to say, I don't think we'll ever rent anything from that place again. What if we would have sunk the boat which at one point we thought it was going to. The whole front end of the boat hit a swell and a big wave came up and the whole front was under. They need to have some type of insurance you can buy from them. We had a foot of water in that boat. It wasn't draining out fast enough. It was a scary deal!! We knew there was a problem when the coolers in the boat started floating. But it was a wonderful vacation all in all. We saw your family picture.
Anyway, thanks again. It was great.
In my opinion the boat rental place was negligent, they should NEVER have rented a boat with an impending storm approaching. We have personally rented boats and planned many deep-sea fishing excursions that have been canceled due to impending storms (some that never ended up coming). I advised this renter to have her insurance company contact the boat rental facility to see if their money can be refunded.
Obviously from this note, they did not let this ruin their vacation, but I shudder to think what "could have happened.” I have now included in my directions a "warning" about renting boats---to be sure to ask the correct questions about the weather, damages,
and most importantly be sure to rent from a reputable place. And I have given the coast guard approved boat rental facilities.
© Christine Karpinski 2006
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