Contractual Language Reviewed: ‘Standing on Board While Wave Passes Under’ Technically Qualifies

The One-Hour Surf Guarantee: A Legal Analysis

Pacific Coast Surf School of Malibu, which operates from a van on PCH and offers a ‘Guaranteed Surfing in 60 Minutes or Your Money Back’ program at eighty-nine dollars per person, has come under scrutiny this week after a customer filed a complaint alleging that ‘surfing’ as defined by the school and ‘surfing’ as understood by the general public are not the same activity and may, in fact, barely overlap.

The complainant, marketing executive Jennifer Huang, thirty-four, maintains that she and her husband paid the fee, spent forty-five minutes on the beach learning ‘the pop-up’ on a foam mat, entered the water on a nine-foot foam board with an instructor holding the tail, experienced the board moving briefly forward during a wave, stood on the board for approximately one second before falling sideways, and was immediately told by the instructor that she had ‘done it’ and ‘surfed.’ ‘I did not surf,’ said Jennifer. ‘Something happened. I was on a board. Water was involved. But I did not surf. I did not have the experience that the word surfing implies when used in normal conversation.’

The School’s Defence

Pacific Coast Surf School founder Tyler Weston, twenty-six, defended the program’s definition vigorously. ‘She stood on a board while a wave moved under it,’ he said. ‘That is technically surfing. That is exactly surfing. Kelly Slater’s first wave probably looked like that. Probably worse. I have no way of knowing but it seems plausible.’

Tyler noted that the school’s guarantee is ‘surfing in sixty minutes,’ not ‘surfing competently,’ ‘surfing enjoyably,’ or ‘surfing in a way that makes you want to surf again.’ ‘Those would be different products at a different price point,’ he explained. ‘We offer the baseline. The baseline is technically achievable.’

Industry Standards

The surf instruction industry in Southern California operates without a universal certification standard for what constitutes successful beginner instruction, which means that ‘surfing in an hour’ can mean anything from genuinely catching and riding a wave to standing briefly on a foam board in conditions that were going to move the board forward regardless of what the person on it was doing. The Surf Industry Manufacturers Association has noted that the lack of standards is an issue the industry has been aware of since approximately 1985 and has not yet addressed.

More surf instruction guidance at Surfrider Foundation. Comedy: The Daily Mash.

SOURCE: http://prat.UK