We booked and paid for the tickets a day in advance at the ticket place in San Pedro. While we were doing that, we asked about buying bus tickets from Chetumal to Playa del Carmen.
We thought, what a deal! So we booked, agreeing to pay once we got to Chetumal. When we arrived at Chetumal, after a two-hour, extremely bumpy ferry trip anyone with back problems would have a rough time; some people actually cried out at the harder bumps , we went through customs fairly easily, then paid for the shuttle with our credit card to another water taxi rep, and went to meet it.
We waited about a half hour, during which time we saw other fellow ferry passengers squeezing four to a taxi. It slowly dawned on us this was the "shuttle" service: four people and their luggage crammed into a cab for a nearly 4-hour trip north! When we were assigned our cab with another Aussie couple, they balked.
They refused to take the cab with all of us, saying they were never told this was the "shuttle" in question, and nor were we or anyone else. They said they'd take a cab just for the two of them, and we could take one for the two of us. The woman representative said fine, but we'd have to pay for another empty seat to make the trip worthwhile for the taxi driver.
The Aussie couple went ballistic, demanded their money back. The rep said she couldn't do that. They went even more ballistic, as did we to a quieter extent, we are Canadian, after all ; After much arguing and haranguing, the rep finally credited our cards my Visa statement noted a refund, minus about 5 bucks, from something called "Fasy Taxi Cab Othon" and gave us a receipt with no apology.
