CAUTION when buying from a broker

[rotrax]

I think it would be entirely relevant to this thread for Tranona to state his previous and/or current connection to the marine industry. Then people can view his comments in context and perhaps in the knowledge that his posts are biased.

I have just looked at Tranona's posts on this thread. I fail to see why you believe he has a connection with the marine industry or trade. Can you enlighten ? As far as I can make out he has contributed his own views and opinions as a boatowner and sailor.

 

[jonic]

Come down a nighclub with me and your see how miserable I am .
Who made you the arbiter of who posts here? No one ,I find it hilarious that surveyors and brokers are suppose to be professionals and they post on here under a bogus name trying to get business. How professional is that !

It must be the weather, but if you are referring to me and you may well not be, as it says on my posts I have been a member of this forum for over 10 years and have made 2700 posts.

I joined before I even could sail! The forum helped me as a total newb become a small boat owner, then graduate to big boats, then to dream of packing up and sailing away, then to actually doing it and going ocean sailing and living aboard for years at a time and then switching careers and becoming a specialist yacht broker whilst swmbo became a yachting journalist and then an author.

All the time I have had the same forum name, have sailed all over the world with other forumites and I know most of the IPC staff and have done for about eight years.

Nothing bogus about my name on here and I have given information freely many many times. Just as others did for me over the last decade.

 

[Tranona]

...Still waiting for a response from Tranona.

Hi Bill - sorry for my tardiness in response - had my grandchildren to stay and spent some quality time with them before they went home.

Anyway - I did work in the marine industry many moons ago - no secret as when threads start about Seagull engines I usually have something to say! I have never had any involvement with brokers other than buying one boat over 30 years ago - no complaints. I have however bought and run a charter boat and have acted as a consultant to a small number of marine businesses - but never brokers or surveyors. So you could say over the last 40 years or so, like many here I have picked up a thing or two about the marine business.

I spent 25 years in a fairly senior position in a university, helping (hopefully) large numbers of middle and senior managers run their businesses or develop their careers in a wide range of organisations.

Despite what you say, first impressions count for more than anything else in an exchange between parties and the "complaint" always has more effect than the subsequent explanation, no matter how reasonable and accurate that explanation might be. This of course means that when you get bad service from somebody, say a broker, most of whom you will only meet once, it makes a big impression, and you are unaware of all the exchanges he has with others that are satisfactory. Equally, people who have good exchanges rarely talk about them unless asked. This assymetry creates problems for both parties. The broker should not have allowed it to happen in the first place, but these things do happen to the best of us, but more importantly there is little he can do about it to recover the position with the other party.

You cannot "regulate" against failed relationships like this. How do you have a "regulation" that says you must not cock up? and who is going to enforce it? Some of the things you complain about are already "regulated" - such as misrepresentation - does not stop people mis describing things - or are you going to have an official "checker" of descriptions? The law is there to stop people losing through misrepresentation.

If a broker fails to do his job and consistently deals badly with people he goes out of business. His income depends on a flow of commission and if he does not sell boats he does not eat. Have a look at lists of brokers 10 years ago and compare that list with now and see how many have gone out of business. It is a difficult life - potentially high costs, uncertain income, competition, owners who won't prepare their boats properly, lots of timewasters to deal with and so on. Not an excuse for not treating people properly, but you can see the potential for things going wrong. Add to this the process of buying and selling a boat is almost always fraught in one way or another - just like buying a house, and particularly when you are dealing direct with another individual (even if through an intermediary) rather than buying from a trader whose business it is to buy and sell on his own account.

Quite often when this subject comes up, I ask the question - well how would you do it better? Nobody really has any "solutions" except "regulation" but no clear idea of what regulation might mean.

Intermediaries of some sort have always been there, and will always be there if they serve a useful purpose. Not perfect, because you are dealing with individual human beings who have a one off relationship with eachother involving an asset that belongs to one, another would like it and the third person in the middle trying to make the exchange happen. Not surprising given the conflicting interests that things don't always go smoothly, even with a well established process to help it along the way.

Despite the complaints that some people air here, hundreds, if not thousands of boats change hands each year through brokers where all parties are happy - some people even post here to say so, but usually in response to somebody complaining. So it is the failures that stick not the successes.