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Overseas wakeboarders : You are suggested to read the following message before making decision to go there.}}
My husband and I are Hong Kong wakeboarding enthusiasts, and recently made a trip to Singapore for the purpose of visiting the Cable Ski Park, Batam. This visit was very unforgettable, but in a very bad way. We have already filed our official complaint with the Singapore Tourism Board, and other relevant authorities in Hong Kong. We are determined to let every one we know, or people who is interested in wakeboarding, to learn our experience with the Cable Ski Park!
We booked via our agent 2 full-day passes with the Cable Ski Park valid on Sep 3, 2005. We were told to go to the meeting venue at Harbourfront Centre, Singapore, at 9:00 am on Sep 3, 2005. The person to meet us there would be Mr. E.H. Long, with contact numbers at +65 9487 5007/9183 5050. We were supposedly to depart from the Harbourfront ferry terminal to the Cable Ski Park by a 9:55 pm ferry.
We landed Singapore on Sep 2, 2005 in the afternoon. We immediately called Mr. Long at the provided numbers to reconfirm our Cable Ski Park tour. But Mr. Long was unreachable at the numbers ¡V no one answered at either number. We stopped calling after 8:30 pm.
On the next day, Sep 3, 2005, which is the date for the Cable Ski Park tour, we called Mr. Long starting 8:30 am, but again no one answered at either number. We nonetheless arrived at the designated meeting point, on time, at 9:00 am. No one was there to meet us up, and there was no signage whatsoever with regard to the Cable Ski Park tour. We kept on trying to contact Mr. Long but the numbers were unanswered. We also sent Mr Long three short messages (¡¥SMS¡¦) via the mobile phone, but again there was no response.
We waited at the meeting point for 45 minutes, asking for help from the concierge (beside Delifrance restaurant) at the Harbourfront Centre, different service counters and even passer-bys. At the same time, we tried searching for the slightest glimpse of Mr Long and kept on phoning him but to no avail. Finally, some staff at one of the service counters spotted us, saw our panicky expressions, and helped us to contact the Cable Ski Park directly. We were told over the phone, by presumably a staff of the Cable Ski Park, that the park was actually closed due to technical problems! There was no trip for us!
We contacted our agent in Hong Kong immediately. Our agent managed to get a Singaporean named Michael Tan (contact number +65 9456 8924, who operates The Board Shop at 04-08 Far East Shopping Centre, Orchard Road), who claimed to be a business partner of Mr Long, and his wife Irene (contact number +65 9336 6679) to contact us. Irene told us the Cable Ski Park has run into technical problems since Aug 24, 2005! We got our service voucher on Aug 29, 2005 to enter the Park!
To comfort us, Michael offered us a tow-boat wakeboarding trip, a free wakeboard, and a free cable-skiing DVD. But we declined to accept any of these, as none of these is a substitution of a cable ski trip. We never heard from or saw Mr Long, who was supposedly the contact person.
We are extremely frustrated, disappointed, and feel being cheated. The whole reason we made the trip to Singapore was for cable-skiing. Cancellation of the Cable Ski Park trip renders our whole trip entirely pointless and meaningless. Worse still, no one from the Cable Ski Park was responsible enough to notify us the cancellation. No staff to meet us at the meeting point on the morning of trip departure to avoid our unnecessary waiting and panicking. Not even a phone call or SMS. We suffered from the hassles of needing to find out, on our own efforts, what was happening to the trip.
Certainly this is not the kind of service to be expected from a listed wakeboarding centre provided in the Wakeboarding Association (Singapore)¡¦s website.
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