(Accountability What?? - Continued P.2)

It wasn't until I asked for the owners name of the company that he started to realize that we were dead serious about this matter.  I've done this dance before with huge companies (Ford) and taken them to court, and won.  I have no doubt that the owner of the company, whose name escapes me but lives in Mexico, wouldn't want to see his name on a court document over a $163.00 fishing reel that was hooped because a boat with his company name on it wrecked it!  The OM said he'd look into it and get back to us no later than a couple days from our visit.  The day after our visit the company phoned and said the cheques in the mail.

Now, this rant isn't meant to be a slam against the Waterway company or the head cheese, but the local staff and how matters are handled, and they aren't the only houseboat company that does stuff like this!  We had a run in a few years back with Twin Anchors where one of their boats was full of drunks and got so close to us that our rod tip wasn't an inch from their vessel!  We phoned that in and got blown off by Twin Anchors, stating that it was their word (houseboat drunks) against the wife and I!  Even after numerous letters to them, we never got so much as an apology from them, sameo with Waterway in this incident.  I even complained to this OM about their boat safety, something which he really took offense to, stating that all the people that operate their boats go through a boat orientation/safety video blah blah.  I told him his "safety" seminars were a crock, and that we just witnessed such an event.  When we were up in the office looking for him the front desk girl was going through the "check sheet" for safety/boat stuff with two clients.  The guy was looking around the room at flies or something and the girl was nodding her head like she was listening to her IPod! They didn't absorb one bit of what was being said to them but, for liability reasons, it has to be read to the clients.  The safety video, I haven't seen that, but obviously the operators of those 5 boats that hit the train bridge in one day forgot alot of it!  Talk to the Bridge Tender sometime if you want a good laugh at the way many of the boats are operated in the channel or on the lake, its pathetic!

So, where does accountability lie in situations such as this, at the bottom of the lake?  I must admit that I was extremely naive in this matter and my wife has bonked me on the head several times for being that way.  In all honesty, I thought that a mulit million dollar outfit like Waterway would in fact step up to the plate and resolve this issue if not the same day it happened, then at the most the day after.  How they can be so arrogant about such an issue and just try and pass the buck to someone else is beyond me.  Not so much as an apology but, there's that liability thing again, heaven forbid they say they're sorry and admit blame.  I told the guy that I too run a small business out on the lake and have been doing so for 7 years, and that if this was how they treated someone from their own town, imagine out-of-towners!  If my son had been operating my boat with my company name on it and did some damage to someone else's property, I wouldn't hesitate to compensate those persons for what he did.  He was driving my boat and representing my business even though I wasn't operating it, that's bad for my business.  It's obvious that Waterway isn't concerned about such a mickey mouse incident and reports of such incidents will make no difference to their "bottom line"!  Sad, isn't it, the rich get richer scenario, no matter what they do, they are never held truly accountable for their actions.

The unfortunate part about this incident is that it will just disappear, not even a blip on the radar for the company.  If in fact we want to be seen on the radar and make these huge companies accountable for their actions, more people have to speak out against them.  To many of us do not want to get involved in such things, don't want to rock the boat, make waves, yadda yadda.  I'm telling you to tip the boat if you have to, make some noise and make these boat operators and their representing companies fully accountable for what they do.  If you can get a reg number from the boat or boat name, maybe a pic of the offending boat, call the RCMP, call the boat company, get the complaint on paper.  I have to admit that I procrastinated  this year on just such a matter, in that I was going to write each of the houseboat companies a letter, stating that all infractions by their boats when witnessed by me will be reported to the authorities.  This latest incident has just kicked me in the butt to do just that.  Get your head outta the sand and do something, don't leave it up to the one to fight your complaints, the more that complain the better chance of change.  That's my hook set on it.