Bay Area Excursions

I purchased an excursion through Groupon for a 4 hr limo and sailing trip for myself, husband and 2 other couples. I paid a few hundred dollars for this excursion. When I attempted to book the excursion, I was told they had no dates available through the expiration date. After several emails back and forth, BAE agreed to extend the Groupon voucher for an additional $ 25. My friends and I agreed, I paid the $ 25 through Paypal and booked a date a year in advance. I was told I would receive a confirmation email a few weeks prior to our scheduled date. When I realized I hadn’t heard anything I sent an email and received an apologetic email stating the manager had been «swamped» and hadn’t had a chance to send the email. The email did contain all my contact information as well as the date, time and location the limo was to pick us up at. Our sailing date arrived, my friends and I were ready at the specified and ended up waiting for a no-​show limo. Not only did the limo not show, but no one from the sail boat called to say where are you??? There is no way to contact this company other than email. I sent 2 emails the morning of our scheduled excursion and have not heard back — that was 3 days ago.
I contacted Groupon who promptly refunded my money but was unable to assist with the additional $ 25.
I should have read the Unilocal reviews first! I will also be contacting the Better Business Bureau to report this company.

Beware! Reservations are only taken by email. You send them your dates, they take days to a week or more to respond, then often tell you that the dates are not available.
You try again for some different dates – same story. I wrote them (for the third time) more than a week ago and am still waiting to hear back. I am giving up on them and am ready to give up on Groupon (I’ve been a good Groupon customer but so far they have done nothing to resolve this problem). I may have to file a lawsuit to get my money back but, if that’s necessary, that’s what I will do.

I had the same terrible experience as others. Company was unresponsive to all my questions and scheduling requests. Do they exist or are they just totally incompetent. Groupon should not offer deals with this company. No way to contact by phone and I just received on automated response asking for redundant information.
Now I’m stuck with Groupon credit.

I tried to schedule an excursion with this company and they never returned my email. Customer lost forever and another bad review.

This was a horrible customer service experience and in the end, a big waste of my time & energy.
I bought a Groupon for a boat ride and scheduled my excursion months in advance as I bought it especially for someone’s birthday & was hoping to go by McCovey cove during a giants game. A few days before the scheduled event they unexpectedly cancelled on me.
So I booked another date a few months away. Again, they cancelled on me a few days before the second scheduled date for «unexpected reasons». They told me I could get a refund or try to reschedule during the winter. I said since I’d bought it for a June birthday with the intent to sail by a giants game, a winter boat ride wasn’t going to work. So they SAID they would refund me…
Groupon gave me a refund promptly after I complained, but didn’t hear anything else from Bay Area Excursions, nor receive any refund from them for weeks (I had paid them in advance $ 50 for a limo ride as well & expected a refund for that). Then weeks later I got an email from Bay Area Excursions that since I received a refund from them & Groupon for the price of the Groupon (did not receive any refund from BAE) I was going to have to face a fine of $ 5000! Are you kidding me? I emailed them back that I had been refunded by Groupon for what I paid for the boat ride, but had received no refunds from Bay Area Excursions whatsoever for the Groupon or the limo ride. Finally, I did receive the limo refund & I’m done with this awful company forever.
I do not recommend this experience to anyone!

Nightmare to book with!

This business is part of many (Golden Gate Excursions, LimoSail Excursions, SF Excursions, etc.) which the business owner uses to promote deals on site such as Groupon and Travelzoo. They oversell their deals, then aggressively attempt to make their services too inconvenient to use.
I had the unfortunate experience of losing money on one of these deals, and have had appalling interactions with the company’s owner — who first bait-​and-​switched the deal that I purchased, offered extremely limited dates and times to use the service and then accused me of fraud in order to get out of the deal.
After being offered verifiable proof that I owned the vouchers I was attempting to use, including contact information for my bank, I was told that the company «declined to do business» with me, and was issued a fake-​weird «no contact order» threatening me with legal action if I so much as called them on the phone to discuss the matter. Best part was when the legal e-​mail address the owner cc’d generated a bounce notification as it was not a valid address.
To date, I have not received a refund. I have been offended, accused of fraud and threatened with legal action.
Buyer beware.
I encourage anyone who attempts to do business with this company to verify details such as company address, the status of the owner’s USCG license (required for commercial chartering by law) and his insurance details. Don’t be surprised when you receive a «no contact order» in response.

We live in Ohio and learned about Bay Area Excursions through a Groupon they ran this month. Not only was our 2 hour cruise and cocktail sailing tour an incredible deal, the crew at this organization was extremely professional, friendly, and had exceptional follow through leading up to our tour. In preparation for our trip, i exchanged numerous phone calls and emails with Jake, who I later learned was the Proprietor of Bay Area Excursions and had the pleasure of sailing with him on 11÷9÷11. He was very flexible, even with all the added pressure he had received to cater to 600+ Groupon subcribers this week alone. Jake opened an additional sailing for our group of four due to our travel schedules and inclement weather we were expected to receive later in the week. Our cruise at Pier 1 ½ was easy to find and we departed right on schedule. We didn’t have much wind, but Jake made up for that with sharing his passion for sailing, experience as a mixologist serving up the best «Jack-​a-​mo» (a combo that you will only get to indulge on this sailing tour) and experience and knowledge of the city. Our sailing tour was interactive, as Jake allowed each one of us to take a turn at sailing with him and made this a fun excursion. The thing I enjoyed most about this tour, was how intimate the experience was. Jake made us feel like he had personally invited us to sail with him aboard his own yacht. We had great weather, the sites were beautiful to see up close and personal, and it was nice to support a locally owned business. If you are considering a sailing tour and want to deal with a huge company with a «commercial» feel, this is not for you. If you want to experience San Fran by the water and prefer a local guide and personalized experience without all the frills, Bay Area Excusions should be your top selection. I rarely make reviews, but Jake made an impression on us. My boyfriend and I truly felt like we were sailing with a friend and Jake aka Jackamo, goes the extra mile to make all of his clients feel right at home.