Surfing
The Palm Springs Surf ClubThis business is NOT BBB Accredited.
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Complaints
Customer Complaints Summary
- 2 total complaints in the last 3 years.
- 1 complaint closed in the last 12 months.
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Submit a ComplaintThe complaint text that is displayed might not represent all complaints filed with BBB. Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business.
Initial Complaint
Date:12/05/2024
Type:Product IssuesStatus:AnsweredMore info
Complaint statuses
- Resolved:
- The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.
- Unresolved:
- The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.
- Answered:
- The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.
- Unanswered:
- The business failed to respond to the dispute.
- Unpursuable:
- BBB is unable to locate the business.
I have tried to get in contact with the manager for the last 3 days with no luck as they've been out of the office or "in a meeting". When I made a reservation, I was immediately prompted to check the boxes of the policies, the very first one being the Cancellation policy. My understanding in reading was as screenshotted, ************, I am being told that there is ANOTHER cancellation policy at the bottom of the page. How would one know that there are multiple cancellation policies on different parts of the page? This is either a plain mistake to have it laid out like that or it is deliberate to confuse the customer. It is incumbent on the business to make sure all policies pertaining to cancellations are in one place that the customer will fully understand and not have any confusion about. Not to mention, the verbiage of "event" vs other names only PSSC is aware of.Business Response
Date: 12/23/2024
On 12/3/24 at 1:40pm **** **** purchased a Pro A-Frames surf session at The Palm Springs Surf Club scheduled for 12pm-1pm on Saturday, December 14, 2024 by making the reservation herself online. She made this reservation for her husband, ******* ****. As you can see in the screenshot of the booking activity, **** **** was sent a confirmation email and it shows that it was successfully delivered, and it was also opened. As you can see in the same screenshot of the booking actions, within 4 minutes of making the reservation and purchasing it, **** **** reached out to cancel her reservation. Our policy for public surf sessions (pro a-frames is a public surf session) is clearly stated throughout the booking process and also included in the confirmation email she received at 1:40pm. Our Cancellation policy for all of our facility's offerings can be found attached. Our cancellation policy for public surf sessions is all sales are final and we do not offer refunds. We will however, rebook customers into a different session or provide a credit to be used at a future time as long as it is not within 72 hours of the surf session start time. On December 3rd, **** **** was offered and provided a credit to be used at a future time. If you refer back to the booking activity screenshot, you can see that an employee for the surf operation at The Palm Springs Surf Club named ******* ******* cancelled the reservation per **** ****** request and created and issued a gift card for the amount of the session. At 1:44pm on 12/3/24 ******* ******* sent a cancellation email to **** **** which was successfully delivered and shows to have been opened. The contents of the cancellation email have been attached. As you can see, it clearly outlines the cancellation policy at the bottom of the email. **** **** was determined to get a refund instead of a credit so she found our cancellation policy for our "Events" and accused us of using "the verbiage of "event" vs other names only PSSC is aware of" in order to confuse the customer on purpose. Please refer to a screenshot of her email to us on December 5th which states this. At The Palm Springs Surf Club, we do host a variety of ticketed events. On December 5th, we had (and still do today) have our tickets for our New Years Eve event live on our website to which you can actively go to and read the Events Cancellation policy. Trying to use a different cancellation policy for a different offering at our facility instead of the correct one which is clearly titled "Cancellation Policy for Public Surf Sessions at The Palm Springs Surf Club" to her benefit to try and get a refund from us when the reservation she made and decided to quickly cancel, should not be successful. This is why we did not issue **** **** a refund. Her credit is still valid for her gift card number which she was already provided and can be seen on the cancellation email she received. Her credit with us for the full amount she paid, does not expire and she can use it any time she would like for any future bookings.
Thank you,
The Palm Springs Surf Club
Initial Complaint
Date:05/14/2024
Type:Service or Repair IssuesStatus:ResolvedMore info
Complaint statuses
- Resolved:
- The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.
- Unresolved:
- The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.
- Answered:
- The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.
- Unanswered:
- The business failed to respond to the dispute.
- Unpursuable:
- BBB is unable to locate the business.
I booked a trip to go surf at the Palm Springs surf club for me and three of my friends which we were supposed to go on in January of this year. The wave technology broke at some point very early on so they said that they could issue us a refund or if we chose, we would be given priority booking when they reopened. I did get an email about the priority booking window being opened which I received April 8 of this year. They were offering a priority booking window of one week, which was april 29th thru May 5th. Obviously for most people taking a weekday trip is not doable for work and that particular weekend I was going to be out of town. As it turns out, the wave broke again and May 4 and fifth were not gonna be an option for anybody anyways. All I wanted was to be given the option to rebook my session at the cost I paid for it originally on a date that would potentially work for me. But they did not give that as an option as they claim that their prices have gone up since we originally booked. And had I known that that priority booking window would have only been five weekdays I wouldve demanded my money back when they originally canceled our booking. They did this to many people. All you have to do is read the one star reviews on ****** and you will see its pretty much all because of the same reason I am telling you about now. it feels like they need to make this situation right and honor the original price of the sessions we booked and give us an option to rebook our trips. I called and asked for a refund last week and have yet to be refunded. But I really just want them to give me what I initially paid for.Business Response
Date: 05/20/2024
To Whom It May ***************** are a facility for surfing here in **** Springs, **. Our technology is the first of it's kind and unfortunately, we have had some technical issues with parts of the wave machines. We have had to suddenly cancel all surf reservations twice, once in January, and again in April due to unforeseen technological issues. Upon the first closure, all guests were given the option to receive a credit for the amount they had paid and priority booking or receive a full refund. All guests were given clear instructions to email ********************************** to request a refund or for anything related to the sudden closure. As you can see in the message that went out to all guests in January, we did not specify how many days the priority window would be to book back into once we re-opened. Upon re-opening in April, all "January Cancelled Gift Card Holders" were given priority access to our bookings before we opened them up to the public. In early April, we ONLY sent a message out to the list of guests who were cancelled on in January and decided to keep a credit with us. These guests were the only ones with access to our bookings for three days before we announced our re-opening on our website and through our customer email subscription.
Our business only opens the booking windows for a few weeks at a time due to many reasons. If we opened the booking windows up specific to the requests of all our customers, we would not be able to sustainably function as an operating business. Our property hosts more than just the surf element. We have a water park with pools, slides, a lazy river and a large splash pad. We also have two restaurants, and many corporate event spaces on property that all operate daily as well. We inform our guests that surf session bookings only open 4-6 weeks out at a time. We understand that the 4 weeks we opened up may have not worked for everyone's schedules but we did our best to properly inform all guests of the process of contacting us in regards to cancelled sessions. We looked through our ********************************** inbox and found no correspondence with *******. His only form of correspondence was calling into our phone lines to which he spoke with an employee of ours. From the beginning of the conversation he was aggressive and proceeded to tell our employee we should be going above and beyond for him and that we should be paying for travel expenses to appease the unfortunate circumstances. Our cancellation policy at the time of first booking a surf session with us clearly states that we do not cover travel expenses. There have been many people affected by the technical issues we have faced. Majority of them are understanding but there are some that have not been happy with the wave pool's closures and we understand the disappointment.
*************************** has been fully refunded as of 5/15/24. The refunds show successful from our end for the full amount. Thank you.
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