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This year we had a group of police from the city come up to Awesome Forest for a weekend of fun and dogsledding. Thanks to their own poor behaviour, they are not welcome back.
It started out with them screwing us up on numbers. They originally told us there would be 15 people. We booked aside accomodations for 15, meals for 15. Guess how many showed up? Nine. So already we've lost money. They could not be bothered to tell us ahead of time (say...when we spoke to them on the phone they day they were meant to arrive?) that they had a smaller group either.
They then got into an arguement with one of our best office workers. T is probably the sweetest girl you will ever meet. She handles all our group bookings. They flat out called her a liar in front of her, to our General Manager, saying she'd promised them all sorts of services and freebies. I have never seen her get angry at a client before! Luckily the GM backed her up.
Well, the biggest annoyance was on their last day when it was time to dogsled. We had made a specialy 9am booking for them, so they could have their own private tour. We confirmed this with them several time, in conversation and in writing. Well, come 9am the guides are ready to go, the dogs are on the line waiting to run...no clients!
We wait fifteen minutes, and the dogs are starting to get antsy. It's bad for them to have them wait too long on the sleds, they get really anxious. Twenty minutes and we send someone to run over to the client's building to check on them. They are making breakfast! Some of them were not even out of bed! The swore everyone had told them 10am for the tour.
So we finally get them on the sleds and launched. About two hours later the tour comes back...minus two clients (sharing a sled) and a guide (on a single sled). One of the clients had decided to let their dogs choose their own trail! They had turned off the main trail the rest of the sleds were using. The guide went after them, trying to catch them and shouting at them. They did not stop or, apparently, hear the guide.
They eventually moseyed back an hour later through the parking lot! They'd been on the snowmobile trails, which is really dangerous as the snowmobilers do NOT expect us on those trails. If they had met a snowmobiler they or the dogs could have been seriously hurt.
In addition to this, their dogs were NOT meant to run a tour that long. We go to a lot of trouble to rank our dogs, so they get enough exercise, but not too much. Because this was a shorter tour, we sent some middle aged dogs. Fine for a two hour run, but three is too much. They dogs were exhausted! We had to take them off running for two days to rest up and recover.
When we asked them why they did not follow the guide, or STOP when they got off the main trail they said "The dogs looked like they knew where they were going, so we trusted them." Aside from the fact that we specifically tell people not to trust the dogs to navigate, why would you trust something that eats its own poop?
Sigh. Glad they were not the local police! I would never feel safe again.
It started out with them screwing us up on numbers. They originally told us there would be 15 people. We booked aside accomodations for 15, meals for 15. Guess how many showed up? Nine. So already we've lost money. They could not be bothered to tell us ahead of time (say...when we spoke to them on the phone they day they were meant to arrive?) that they had a smaller group either.
They then got into an arguement with one of our best office workers. T is probably the sweetest girl you will ever meet. She handles all our group bookings. They flat out called her a liar in front of her, to our General Manager, saying she'd promised them all sorts of services and freebies. I have never seen her get angry at a client before! Luckily the GM backed her up.
Well, the biggest annoyance was on their last day when it was time to dogsled. We had made a specialy 9am booking for them, so they could have their own private tour. We confirmed this with them several time, in conversation and in writing. Well, come 9am the guides are ready to go, the dogs are on the line waiting to run...no clients!
We wait fifteen minutes, and the dogs are starting to get antsy. It's bad for them to have them wait too long on the sleds, they get really anxious. Twenty minutes and we send someone to run over to the client's building to check on them. They are making breakfast! Some of them were not even out of bed! The swore everyone had told them 10am for the tour.
So we finally get them on the sleds and launched. About two hours later the tour comes back...minus two clients (sharing a sled) and a guide (on a single sled). One of the clients had decided to let their dogs choose their own trail! They had turned off the main trail the rest of the sleds were using. The guide went after them, trying to catch them and shouting at them. They did not stop or, apparently, hear the guide.
They eventually moseyed back an hour later through the parking lot! They'd been on the snowmobile trails, which is really dangerous as the snowmobilers do NOT expect us on those trails. If they had met a snowmobiler they or the dogs could have been seriously hurt.
In addition to this, their dogs were NOT meant to run a tour that long. We go to a lot of trouble to rank our dogs, so they get enough exercise, but not too much. Because this was a shorter tour, we sent some middle aged dogs. Fine for a two hour run, but three is too much. They dogs were exhausted! We had to take them off running for two days to rest up and recover.
When we asked them why they did not follow the guide, or STOP when they got off the main trail they said "The dogs looked like they knew where they were going, so we trusted them." Aside from the fact that we specifically tell people not to trust the dogs to navigate, why would you trust something that eats its own poop?
Sigh. Glad they were not the local police! I would never feel safe again.
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