Bad Behavior

It’s the Friday before the Wednesday when the cargo ship PAC Athena is to arrive at Port Everglades and we load OceanFlyer to be transported to Victoria.

YachtPath continues to provide no information or confirmation this is all going to happen as promised. Our problem is that it is Thanksgiving week and there are almost no seats left on any flights. If the loading is to occur on the 23rd we need to depart on the 20th to allow time to double check everything.

I reached out to everyone I know at YachtPath and the owner will not call me back and my sales representative is clueless and not helpful in finding out what is going on and conveying that information to me.

She gave me Kevin Cumming’s (brother of the owner) cell phone so I can call. I guess she feels no obligation to do any work on her own. I called the number and get a message that his mailbox is full and I cannot leave a message; a clear signal that he never wants to hear from anyone.

I finally tracked him down in his office. When I state that my boat is scheduled to travel on PAC Athena, I hear “Oh no” at the other end. His explanation is that he just found out that the grain loading facility in New Orleans is backed up and the new schedule is now a November 30th arrival in Port Everglades.

Later in the day, I found out that the HMY Yachts broker’s assistant had been informed yesterday that the arrival would be delayed. So “I just found out” was not truthful. I then proceeded to call everyone who is impacted by this new news.

It has been a couple of weeks since I was reassured by Dennis Cummings that he would provide regular updates on the status of the transport. So far, no information has been forthcoming from anyone at YachtPath. I continue to be amazed at how little YachtPath cares about their clients. It would be a simple matter to issue regular informational emails, if only to say, there is no new information.

We came within an hour of buying $1,500 worth of airline tickets (middle seats only) and if I had not spent hours of my time to track down someone at YachtPath, we would have been out that money.

I continue to take things into my own hands. After some internet searching, I located a site that would show me the location of PAC Athena. At least now I know the location of the vessel. The information on the site is usually no less than 1 or two hours old. I figured that is will take PAC Athena 64 hours to sail form New Orleans to Port Everglades. Unfortunately, I’ll need to buy airline tickets more than 64 hours in advance, but a least I’ll be able to see when the ship leaves it current berth for the grain elevator and when it leaves New Orleans. If YachtPath continues to be unresponsive, I’m working on contacting the PAC shipping lines to get information from the source.