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Business Profile

Boating Club

Freedom Boat Club, LLC

This business is NOT BBB Accredited.

Find BBB Accredited Businesses in Boating Club.

Complaints

This profile includes complaints for Freedom Boat Club, LLC's headquarters and its corporate-owned locations. To view all corporate locations, see

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Freedom Boat Club, LLC has 129 locations, listed below.

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    Customer Complaints Summary

    • 42 total complaints in the last 3 years.
    • 19 complaints closed in the last 12 months.

    If you've experienced an issue

    Submit a Complaint

    The 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.

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    Complaint status

    Complaint type

    • Initial Complaint

      Date:09/12/2022

      Type:Service or Repair Issues
      Status:
      Answered
      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 am getting unsolicited texts from this organization. I know there was a lawsuit in 2020 and I thought this business lost and was prohibited from doing this.

      Business Response

      Date: 10/12/2022

      Hello ***********************,

      Our apologies for the delay in response. We took action to remove your information from our system as your request came in. We believe this issue is now resolved as you requested. Thank you. 

    • Initial Complaint

      Date:08/27/2022

      Type:Sales and Advertising Issues
      Status:
      Resolved
      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.
      We are members of the Freedom Boat Club of Tampa Bay. The charge I would like to dispute is call Peace of Mind which is an insurance that cover when you are out in the water. It is optional but automatically charged to your account every year. They charge me $321 on May 1, 2022. They have policy to cancel the insurance so I call the office on May 16, 2022 to cancel. They said no problem and told me to fill out a form and everything will be taken care of. I received a email with the link provided and filled immediately. They did not provide conformation after filling the form. It has been 90 days and I haven't see any response nor payment back to my account.

      Business Response

      Date: 03/28/2025

      Hello,

      Our apologies for such a delayed response to your complaint. This club was a franchise and recently acquired by *********. We are working to resolve all open issues.

      I have researched your account and do see that a refund for this optional benefit was refunded to you in September 2022. The reason these coverages are auto renewed (which is in the contract) is so that there is no lapse in coverage. They are always refundable if someone requests cancelation after it has been billed. I am sorry that it was not handled more quickly.

      If we can assist in any other way, please call us at ************.

      Thank you.

      Sincerely,

      Freedom Boat Club

      Customer Answer

      Date: 03/31/2025

       
      Better Business Bureau:

      I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me.

      Sincerely,

      **** ****

    • Initial Complaint

      Date:08/26/2022

      Type:Product Issues
      Status:
      Resolved
      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.
      we put $4000 down on Freedom Boat Club membership. We work full time so we enjoy going out on the boat on the weekends. last year they cancelled our boat at least twice because it was out of service. this year it takes at least a month in advance to get a reservation, and when you do something is always falling apart on the boat. On august 13, 2022 we had a boat out of ******, **, we mentioned as we got on the boat that the depth finder was not working. Little did we know until we tried to anchor out in the water to meet our friends that the neutral and reverse also didn't work. as we tried to reverse it would not work and it hit our friend's boat and put a big scratch in it. almost hit one of our friends that was in the water. we called the dock and they brought another boat out (the screen said maintenance required) and they verified once they got in and tried it that indeed neutral and reverse were not working. they said they had just had the lower engine worked on and we pointed out that the mechanic's s**** went right through the other end and it must have caused water to ruin the gears. we were told someone would call us monday (aug 15th) to take an incident report and get the other guys boat fixed. no one contacted us so our friend called them and told him his ****** said it would be 400 to fix, they have basically ghosted our friend. then i emailed ******************* (executive at freedom boat club) on aug 16th, he did not reply but he must have given his district director, **** my # and he called me on aug 17th. **** said he would try to get the 60 day cancellation policy waived or if we decided to stay he would try to get one month membership waived. i called him aug 19 to give him our decision, he had covid so i called him aug 22 and he said he would call me by the end of the day. i didnt hear anything so i called him aug 25 he texted that he was in a meeting, i didnt hear back so i sent him a text to cancel our membership & get our friends boat fixed.

      Customer Answer

      Date: 09/23/2022

       Hi I received your email this morning regarding me hearing from freedom boat club. I did hear from them on Aug 29th, they said they cancelled our membership and waived the 60 day cancellation policy. However when I reminded him of the$400 due to our friend for the damage to his boat caused by their faulty boat he said that would be taken care of and as of yesterday our friend has not received a check, so that part of the complaint is still pending. Thanks for your help, **********;

    • Initial Complaint

      Date:07/27/2022

      Type:Billing Issues
      Status:
      Resolved
      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.
      Around February 2022 I and my son signed up for the freedom boat club. They sold us on how they always have boats available and how we could rent from anywhere in the country and Europe. It's on the website and advertisement. The boats was suppose to be ready to go starting May 1st 2022. We started off having issues as no boats was available. They claimed that registrations was being held up at the state level. The dock in NK was not available for use at all till late May around the beginning of the last week in May. We have emails and text messages from them apologizing for the issues. They started to send us out on unregistered boats using a dealers license number. We paid a membership fee of 4,000 and we paid our money payments as well in advance. Like most people we trusted the company and the staff and not have an attorney look over the contracts they have you sign. As it turns out they wrote so you have no rights or recourse in any kind of dispute. It gives them complete and final say and they can do anything they want. A staff member claimed like others before us see their disputes. My son got upset with her about the boats not being available. So they terminated our membership after two months of use. They won't call, text or write a letter or email just terminated both our memberships and stole all our money. I have been begging captain Rob to have the person who made the call to suspend us. This is all because of boat availability. We do not have any rights at all, no dialogue, no mediation, no warnings nothing just a termination and took all the money. I requested to keep my membership since the issue was not with me but my son and they still said no. I requested to sit or have a zoom meeting with my son present to see if there could be a way to resolve everything. But again no one will even talk to me or him. I feel we was scammed out of thousands of dollars. Think about what they are doing. Taking huge amounts of money upfront w/termination at will

      Business Response

      Date: 08/31/2022

      Consumer Response /* (2000, 15, 2022/08/30) */
      This was resolved

    Freedom Boat Club, LLC is NOT a BBB Accredited Business.

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