Avoid Burnt Lake Outfitters!

[Spoonbill]

All I asked was for him to honor pricing and my deposit and he wouldn’t even do that. Sounds like he screwed everybody

Little confused by your first post, did the outfitter honor your deposit or just offer a discount on a 2021 hunt?

 

[William Sublette]

great first post

I got hosed (blatantly) by an outfitter once .


He made me so mad I was going to start an entire outfitter review message board.


I was going to name it "Pounding Sand".



I know where the guys coming from.



Its a good first post

 

[danarnold]

I got hosed (blatantly) by an outfitter once .


He made me so mad I was going to start an entire outfitter review message board.


I was going to name it "Pounding Sand".



I know where the guys coming from.



Its a good first post

I totally agree outfitters that take advantage of people should be roasted here,
If this is your(op)only contribution and only reason to post here I don’t much care for it.

 

[gbflyer]

I spent 12 years in the guiding business. Fishing not hunting. Had some financial problems along the way and had to lawyer up at one point even. The advice we got was to never operate on deposits. They should be held in an escrow account and deposits returned immediately when necessary. We took that advice. Probably kept us out of bankruptcy and some sort of civil judgment situation. In the States, there can be action and the lodge/guide business will lose, depending on how badly the customer wants their money back. Plus it’s just bad press that a business really doesn’t need, especially in today’s world of online reviews.

Not sure about Canadian law.

 

[Salmonchaser]

I know many new and experienced out fitters operate on deposits but they should go into escrow. In 20 years we’ve never cancelled a trip but spent 50k last spring working with the state just to open. About 60% of our folks made it, the others at their option got refunded or their week next year. Most took next year.
Regardless, this needs to be part of your due diligence, here on out I would ask a potential outfitter how they handled covid/deposits/rebook. Ask the references. The crisis is no longer a hypothetical impact. Buy trip insurance and read the damn contract. A good contract will give you options early in the process but become more restrictive as your trip approaches. Pretty standard. If it reads like it was written by a teenager, be warned. If you have to go buy lunch for your brother in law the lawyer to understand it, then you’ll know under what circumstances you’ll get your deposit back. Add your understanding of the contract to your list of plus and minus.
If you are part of a group, please read the contract, don’t rely on your BIL to fill you in completely. You should at least call the outfitter once, know what state or country you’re going to.
it would be nice if people were good to their word, deposits help with that.

 

[alaska_bou]

Be careful, most travel insurance companies do not cover pandemic-related cancellations. Most of the "cancel for any reason" options are quite a bit more expensive and only offer 50% of your money back (from what I have seen). I have used travel insurance and do recommend it, especially if the hunt is high value, but fine print disqualifiers are hard to spot and vary from company to company.

 

[Lone_Wolf]

Little confused by your first post, did the outfitter honor your deposit or just offer a discount on a 2021 hunt?

Stole the deposit and ONLY offered a discount off of 2021 Pricing. He did the same thing to me. And apparently several other guys. I pm’d the OP when I saw this. OP also said he must’ve got blocked from this forum because it won’t let him log on anymore.

 

[Spoonbill]

Stole the deposit and ONLY offered a discount off of 2021 Pricing. He did the same thing to me. And apparently several other guys. I pm’d the OP when I saw this. OP also said he must’ve got blocked from this forum because it won’t let him log on anymore.

When you signed the contract did it say the deposit was refundable? I have a friend who implemented non refundable deposit policy for his training school because of routine cancellations. He allows discounts towards a future date but no refunds.
I mention this because if it is not in the contract, then you can pursue legal action. If it is, then you may be up the creek.

 

[hereinaz]

Covid preventing hunts is different than a client cancelling.

100% agree. Read the contract. Gonna depend on the language of the contract, who takes that risk of impossibility of performance.

"Right and wrong" isn't the same as legal. Neither is good business practice.

 

[weaver]

I could understand if the outfitter wasnt able to or just didn't want to refund the deposit even though it's bad business practice.
To not honor the deposit for a future hunt is way out of bounds imo.



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