I have been a member of this site for almost seven years. In that time I have learned who to consider using for a trip and, more importantly, who to stay away from, so I feel obligated to share a recent bad experience. A good friend and I who travel to South America annually or more often to shoot birds booked a hunt with Jeri Booth and The Detail Company Adventures to go to Bolivia to shoot pigeons. We booked the hunt in January of 2016 at SCI to travel in late June of 2016. We had never used her before, but my friend has known her for over 20 years from the outdoor shows. This was both of ours’ annual vacation. Trip was paid in full except for tips and shells, airline reservations made. American Airlines cancelled our flight out of Miami to Santa Cruz after we had already arrived there, and with no other seats available we had no choice but to come home. Once we got home we immediately attempted to rebook for the next year. We were told by Jeri that the cost was going to go up $460 and shells were going to go up by $2/box. We are both high volume shooters so that did not make us happy but what choice did we have. Jeri picked the dates for us for the following year and rebooked our flights. She communicated to us by phone and email that she made a trip to Bolivia in November of 2016 to personally visit the outfitter and to make sure our trip was good to go for late June of 2017.
Jeri notified us less than 48 hours before we were scheduled to fly out of San Antonio that “we have a problem” because only three hunters (us and one other) were booked in to the lodge and the operator was insisting on having a minimum of four to six. While Jeri encouraged us to find other hunters to go with us she never mentioned that we were required to have more hunters. She told us that we could not go and wanted to book us in to another lodge. As I had shoulder surgery scheduled the week we were supposed to get back to Texas I told her that was not possible. As Jeri had a whole year to work this out for us my friend and I decided we were no longer comfortable using her and requested a refund for our trip which she has refused to provide, so we are going forth with legal action. If any more details are desired you can PM me.

Over the top response by you IMO.....specifically the nonsense tag line at the bottom.

I'd be interested in other member's take on this.

Norton: PM sent.

quote:

Originally posted by Norton:
Over the top response by you IMO.....specifically the nonsense tag line at the bottom.

I'd be interested in other member's take on this.

I think it all depends on what the contract says. If this is in fact the first time they were advised of this , I do not blame them for being upset.

Litigation on relatively small amounts like this is generally not economically feasible.

I think the signature phrase was obtained from those who are upset with Blair World Wide. They used the same thing.

I did not put a lot of pertinent information in my initial post to try and keep the length of it to a minimum. One thing I left out-we sent our money for the trip, in full, promptly after the initial booking. We requested a written contract many times mainly so we would know what was and was not included (gun cleaning, laundry, wifi, etc, etc) and were told by her more than once that as far as she was concerned her emails and phone calls served as our "contract". We will never make that mistake again.
Larry, in Texas we have a law called the "Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act". It was originally written to deal with crooked car dealers and home builders, but it has a "Bait and Switch" clause that applies to other business transactions. Our initial exploration with an attorney leads us to believe we may be able to use this act to recover our money. The law allows for treble damages, mandates attorney's fees be paid, and even allows for "mental anguish". Our trip cost was $4350 each but you do the math. I still can't believe she is willing to ruin her reputation over this. All we want is our money back.

Definitely a mistake to have no contract with someone not known to you. I have heard of that company but do not recall if it was good or bad. I just remember the name.

Best of luck in resolving the situation.

DRJ - sorry to hear about your planned hunt in Bolivia. It's always disappointing when a hunt doesn't go as planned - or doesn't happen at all. I won't try to debate what's right for your experience with Jeri Booth and The Detail Company, but I wanted to share an experience I had with them.

Years ago, I booked a multi-destination hunt in Argentina and Bolivia (ducks, doves, pigeons). The front part of the hunt was booked through one booking agent (the duck hunt), and the second leg was booked through Jeri Booth at The Detail Company (pigeons/doves in Bolivia).

While I was on the duck hunt, Jeri reached out to me to tell me that she had heard from the outfitter in Bolivia, and that the conditions/weather for the pigeon hunting had become very poor and that they suggested cancelling that portion of the trip. I could have gone to Bolivia and shot doves, but I was really in it for the pigeons (kudos to the outfitter in Bolivia as well). I decided to cancel that part of the trip, and asked Jeri if there were other alternatives for me while in South America. Within a day, she had me rebooked for a pigeon hunt with another outfitter in Argentina. That hunt went exceedingly well, I've become good friends with the outfitter, and I remain in contact with Jeri to this day, largely because she helped salvage an unfortunate situation in Bolivia. She could have easily let me go to Bolivia and then find out it would be a dove-only hunt, but didn't and worked hard to find a good alternative.

I can understand your level of frustration regarding your trip, but wanted to share one of my experiences. I hope you get the situation resolved satisfactorily.