GuideslyReviews of guidesly.com

I booked a trip for four people with Captain Benjamin Knight on 4/22/26 and paid $100 deposit. I received two confirmation e-mails, confirming the date and time of the trip, but no contact information for the Guide, which should have been a red flag. My group showed up at 6:50 am for a 7:00 am departure, and as we walked up the pier, the boat that we were apparently booked to take was pulling away from the pier. Guidesly customer service supposedly doesn’t open until 8:00 am but after numerous calls and text bot attempts from everyone in my party I was contacted with someone from customer support who said she would text me Mr. Knight’s number. I received a number, and called multiple times and eventually was able to talk to Mr. Knight who stated he “hadn’t been with Guidesly since 2022”. He stated he was unavailable for the day ,as he was obviously pulling away with a group that booked him privately. Fortunately, a family friend had a direct contact for a guide named Mike McGahan (USA Ultimate Shoreline Adventure) and he was able to meet us by 9:30 am and take us on a 5-hour trip from Pensacola. My recommendation is to never book through this company. You can try to find the names of the guides through this site, but absolutely do not book through them… try to find another way to contact the guide. Or better yet, go with Mike above.

After this service collects your money, they disappear. No follow up on client inquiries or confirmation of trip details. I will not use them again.

Captains!!! Do not use this service. Horrible service and process. Had a customer no show a trip and broke the cancellation policy. After they confirmed that we were legit the balance, they later refunded without any communication and the next trip I tried to track down my money only to find out it was going to pay back what they reimbursed the customer

Do not use this company. Similar to another review here. I booked, it was confirmed the day before and the guide no-showed. Up at 4:30am to meet the guide at a convenience store in the middle of nowhere with barely any cell service with the workers of the convenience store looking out the window wondering what I was doing sitting in their parking lot for an hour and a half, making all of us uncomfortable. Guides ruined 2 days of a 6 day PNW roadtrip that we’d planned for almost a year. Going to bed early to make the the time, waking up early to meet and being put in an uncomfortable situation where I was getting no answers. Customer service was less than helpful and lied to me, said they left a voicemail for the guide at the same phone number I was given, when I called (several times), the guides voicemail had not been set up. I had to argue for a full refund and threaten a charge back to finally get refunded. Waste of time and extremely disappointing all around. I still don’t know what happened or if they actually confirmed with the guide prior to the date, no communication to me from the guide, no communication on what would be done to hold the guide accountable for my loss…. Don’t do it. Go with a different booker who actually cares about their customers experience and the thought/time that goes into one of the trips booked through their site. Edit: probably most important; this guide remains on their site with a 5 star rating.. I’m unable to leave a review because the trip was “cancelled”. Cancelled is an interesting choice of words. Clearly their rating system can’t be trusted.

Just had a horrible experience with Guidesly. Booked a fishing trip for my dad’s birthday. Received confirmation for the trip, reminder email day before, and then an email at 5am the morning of stating that we would depart at 8am instead of 7am - no big deal. We get there and the guide did not show. Apparently the guide had messaged us several times through the website, but I never received a notification for that (nor did I think I would need to go back and check the website for messages since I listed my email and phone number). Since he received no response, he alleges that he figured we had bailed so did not show up. That part isn’t Guidesly’s fault, but the shoddy messaging system 1000% needs improvement. When I went back to check if he had reached out, the website will not allow me to view any messages and just keeps trying to load that page. I am able to see messages in the app, but the awful user experience and lack of any other kind of notification left a bad taste in my mouth. Don’t get me wrong, the guide should have reached out another way instead of just bailing, but I wish Guidesly would have at least noted that I would need to download the app in order to communicate with my guide. The customer service team has been responsive and somewhat helpful, but apparently if the guide doesn’t approve the cancellation, they may not be able to give us the full refund. Since the guide is alleging it’s our fault, I doubt we’re getting the refund. Just skip the headache and avoid booking through Guidesly.

Beware when you book that you will be charged for the trip even if you pay the captain the day of. I have called, emailed and only after I opened a dispute did they start returning calls. The captain has tried to call etc. I gave up and let my credit card company deal with them. I don’t have time to chase these guys down.

I talked to someone over the phone to cancel my trip because their site messaging system is crap and there is no easy way to cancel a trip on the web site. The person told me it was canceled. Life got chaotic and I forgot to check that I got my refund. Fast-forward a month or so and I just got an email reminding me of my trip that I can't go on. Now I'm trying to get someone to answer and cancel it. I feel like this site just scams you for your deposit. Would not use.

Buyer beware, their cancelation procedures do not put the customer in control. If you need to cancel, only the boat captain can do it or you can call in to customer service to do it. If you call in, be prepared to have to call them multiple times and be told it's canceled yet I received no confirmation email or anything, I had to call back to find out they never canceled it to begin with. The second time they were able to successfully cancel the booking. This is clearly a small operation, as I had to call several times and kept getting their voicemail. They did finally pick up though and finally successfully deleted it.