Life rafts again.

boatmike

boatmike

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Continuing my research into LRs has lead me to some interesting facts.
1. A LR can, it appears, comply with SOLAS or ISAF without being self righting.
2. Even the cheap Seago 4 man "PBO best on test" at £449 costs £261.90 (Cosalt) to service every 3 years. More expensive ones very little different.
3. The 3 year service life is driven by the life of the flares in the raft. The only other consumables are a 6 pack of Stugeron and some water.
4. Very rarely do they need to do anything apart from inspect, test, rearm the inflation thingy and re-pack apparently on a first service. Any failures of the raft itself and they will usually condemn it.
5. An ISO 9650-1 compliant raft seems to be built to the same material standard as SOLAS and ISAF. It's the contents that are different. Budget ones at £449 have no material standard compliance. (That's not to say they won't work of course)
So here we are chaps and lassies with SOLAS and ISAF rafts that are NOT self righting, don't have anything inside that we can't easily get better by having a cheaper one with a grab bag and cost £1750, when I can buy a fully self righting ISO 9650-1 for £949.
What is going on here? Are we being had? Or am I missing something?
Does the folorum think self righting isn't important?
Why should I pay £600-£700 more for one that can inflate upside down? /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif
 
Seago Servicing is a rip off.....

Here is the basic prices from Premium Lifreaft, who are agents for 8 of the worlds best known names..... but not Seago. Perhaps its better to work out the whole life cost of the raft and emergency ancilliaries before purchase. Certainly came as a bit of a shock to me.

PREMIUM LIFERAFT SERVICES are authorised to carry out servicing by The Maritime & Coastguard Agency & no fewer than 8 manufacturers. Our fully qualified service personnel ensure you get the job done properly and our reputation for good service ensures that you get value for money.

We can service most makes of Liferaft, Dinghy, Lifejacket and are now an approved Jon Buoy service station. We are happy to give a quote before the work is carried out and do not charge you for condemning your raft.

Basic servicing prices (net):

SIZE 4 Man 6 Man 8 Man 10 Man 12 Man 14 Man Lifejacket JonBoy Dinghy
PRICE £70.00 £80.00 £95.00 £110.00 £130.00 £150.00 £6.00 £32.00 £27.00

If you require details please call or e mail and we will do our best to help.

PREMIUM LIFERAFT SERVICES
 
Yes its a shame, having only just bought a Seago. But boatmikes research says that all that is changed at service is flares, water and seasick tablets, all of which can go in the grab bag, do you need to service every 3 years, why not 6?
 
Are they (all) QA'd properly to start with? Are you certain that there are no leaks in it? As you say, you can take VHF, Water, Pills & Flares in the grab bag ... but you haven't got a spare Liferaft ... would it not be a good idea to check it (or have it checked) once?
 
I hope Seago are reading this, as many of us have bought Seago liferafts on the back of good magazine reviews, positive impressions upon seeing the product at various boatshows, and recommendations from fellow forumites.... it would be a shame if they allowed a ridiculous situation like this to spoil their excellent reputation...

If it costs me £260+ to service mine, then i'll replace it with a new one... and it won't be Seago!.... and i'll make sure all my friends know why....

Well Seago... are you reading this?.... can you correct this silly situation?
 
Not many liferafts are selfrighting - another good reason to do a survival course where you can learn how to do it in a nice calm pool with no wind /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

W.
 
OK Chaps.... An update.
I have just spoken to a very co-operative and interested sales guy from Seago and alerted him to this thread. He is I believe very concerned that I was quoted £260 by Cosalt this morning which was rather higher than normal but did say that somewhere about £200 could generally be expected.
It's also good news that the company someone gave the link to... Mayday Marine have now been approved and trained by Seago so you can get your rafts serviced there if you want for a flat price plus materials.
I therefore think it's a pretty level playing field as far as servicing goes and unfair to say you wouldn't buy a Seago because of servicing costs. Personally I think it unfair to say Seago servicing is a rip-off anyway. It's not them that do the servicing. In this case it's Cosalt. Simple lesson seems to be if you don't like Cosalt prices go somewhere else (perhaps like Mayday) It shouldn't affect who's liferaft you buy.
So I think that's a red herring. As someone else said, £90 for a service plus new flares, consumables (including gas canister for inflation etc) would soon add up to £200 or thereabouts. The lesson perhaps is that servicing a budget liferaft that costs circa £500 is probably going to cost the same as one at £1,000 because the same work and materials are involved. So don't expect half price servicing on a budget liferaft of anyones make!

I am still left however with the opinion that if a liferaft is built to ISO 9650-1 it (the raft itself) should be as good as any SOLAS approved one. When you get to cheapies there is no doubt in my mind that the Seago raft came out "best on test" by PBO for all the right reasons but is also built out of butyl rubber where others are PVC... that's got to be good. My opinion is still leading me to the top of the Seago range though rather than a budget raft, as I don't think I want to be bobbing about in the middle of the oggin, thinking "wish I had gone to specsavers!"
Basically I can buy a self righting raft from Seago to ISO 9650-1 for around £1000 where most SOLAS rafts are £1700 and more and are not self righting. What do you get for the additional £700? Nothing you can't have in a grab bag and service regularly yourself for a fraction of that cost...
The only question I still have, and I think it's a "no-brainer" is, is it worth paying £1000 for a self righting one when they have a very good ISO for £800 that is not self righting. How important is self righting? Sod it, for £200 I don't ever want to find out!
 
Well done Boatmike, good bit of investigative work there.

Make mental note to self, boatmike is forum liferaft fount of knowledge!
 
Mike

I recently did the RYA sea survival. I can't recommend this course enough, it is really worth it. If only to see and use a liferaft. Our liferaft inflated upside down, the instructors comment was that this was very rare, he had only seen it a few times in the pool training environment. Righting a liferaft is not that difficult, but I would look at the liferaft you intend to buy inflated before buying,so that you can see things like the boarding system is easy to use and righting strops are easy to reach from the water.
If I had a choice( and I was buying a new raft - i am not, one came with my boat) I would go for a raft with a good boarding system (inflatable rather than webbing strops) rather than self righting.
 
Well done Mike.

EXCEPT......

I had my liferaft serviced by....THE FACTORY.
This was facilitated by free transport form Mailspeed marine, as they collect and deliver each Thursday.

The amount quoted to me at the Boat Show (because I went to complain to them there) waas ...'about 140 quid'.

This miraculously turned into 189 quid PLUS VAT.

So, I think it is a rip off.

Did you ask them why they have fallen out wiith so many Servicing agents?
The first statement was that SEMS were not up to Seago standards. Then Iasked about Premium Liferaft Services. Apparently they cant come to an agreement because of the restrictive practices required by Seago, not required by the likes of Zodiac,Avon, Autoflug and others.

I told Seago that it is unacceptable that their rafts have to go back to them, or the very inconveniant (and expensive as it turns out)for me Cosalt.

So if they are reading this, I would be prepared to enter into correspondance publicly on this thread.
 
I agree that it's a bit of a rip off and wouldn't want to defend then but fwiw my servicing (Zodiac) included weighing the cylinder and a lot of other checks too (they gave me a check list that looked very comprehensive, with values for various tests being recorded) also consider any warranty or recall issues. I have a cynicism that liferaft manufaturers avoid recalls like the plague, but alert servicing agents to any known issues so it's probably still worth getting it serviced at an approved service outlet.

Didn't the ISO std have defined boarding method requirement that was an improvement over the "old" design? I know mine isn't ISO and just has a weighted rope ladder which by all accounts is not very effective compared with the inflatable "ramp" type
 
Well thanks Jim but I am only doing this out of self interest. Perhaps it helps having managed commercial contracts when I was working full time and having to service ships at refit, but I knew from that about SOLAS stuff but not ISAF ISO9650-1 and least of all the budget yottie ones. It's been interesting finding out.

First let me say that IMHO if you get ANY raft serviced for less than your £189plus VAT you are probably involving a cowboy outfit and I would seriously worry about the quality control. I think that's about the right price frankly. I really think you won't find a reputable company to do a good job cheaper than that.
Considering that you have flares to replace, which is probably a minimum of £30-40,
other consumables probably the same at least and say 2 hours labour at £30/hour minimum that's £120 minimum at cost, plus transport, any other items, and then that totally unreasonable /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gifcharge for that evil thing called profit and I can see £189 easily. Then theres the dreaded VAT that none of us can escape!
No I am sorry, I think you are reacting to the fact that if you buy a raft at £450 (inc VAT) it still costs half that to service it 3 years later. Perhaps if you had paid £2,000 for it in the first place you might have felt better!
As far as "restrictive practices" are concerned I have no idea what you mean but think you should be careful of your terminology in public or you may get this thread pulled again by the moderators. As they have now approved Mayday and for all I know others, I can't see any commercial restrictive practice that is evident and can only think that you have been listening to the wrong people. Some companies, like those tied in with their competitors, may be feeding you a line of bullshit frankly. I have certainly heard quite a lot of comments in that catagory from some companies I talked to. Also there may be some where Seago are quite responsibly looking for a certain standard of QC before they are prepared to put them on their approved list and they have not reached that standard. But thats conjecture, I don't know. If it's true I applaud it. I don't want my raft serviced by a cowboy outfit thanks. Certainly they told me that they also service rafts themselves, but that's a good thing is it not?
No sorry Jim. While you may have not expected to shell out £189 plus VAT that's simply because you didn't do your research beforehand. I can see how it might be a shock but it's a reasonable cost IMHO and you will have to pay that whoever's life raft you buy.
Finally I would like to say that I have NO CONNECTION with Seago and am not getting anything out of this. I only wanted to pass on what I had learned and ask the forums opinion in case I had missed anything. I think if you still have an issue with Seago you should talk to them directly not involve the forum in your argument by having what you call public correspondence. It's seemingly only you that has an issue anyway. I certainly don't want to be involved.
 
As I said on a previous thread, I have done a survival course but it was a long time ago and a BoT organised course rather than RYA. I have also done a lot of diving so know about getting out of the water and how difficult it can be. I agree with your comments about "see before you buy" and have seen the budget Seago but not the more expensive ones. The boarding arrangements on all of them look very good. PBO commented that the Seago was the easiest to board of those they tested. While I hear what you say I want one with a good boarding system AND self righting if possible. At 65 I am still very fit but not as agile as I once was!
 
interesting post - mayday marine currently have our xm valise in for service and I have found so far their approach very straightforward and encouraging - when I took it in they gave me the option of having it serviced without replacement of consumables such as flares and water at a cost of c £100 - they used a particular term for this which I cannot rememeber but in effect explained it was making it a basic raft only - alternatively if I wanted it maintained to full spec with all out of date flares etc replaced it was nearer £200, as most of our cruising is solent based I decided that I would rather grab a grab bag with flares/handheld vhf and gps than have kit left in the raft so have gone for the basic approach - all good so far but they then rang me a few days ago with the disturbing news that the excess pressure valves had failed and would have to be replaced - about another £100 - impressed by their down to earth approach as they said I might prefer to buy a new one (not from them ) - we finally decided to have it repaired as that way it should be ok for a few more years - don't like to think too long about what might have happened had we thrown it - pulled string and watched all the air hiss out of the broken valve !
 
Mike, the companies I have dealt with have been servicing my rafts for 20 years. Premium Liferaft in Burnham are Europes biggest hirers of rafts, and service all the premium makes. Not cowboys or even close to it.
If you look in the thread above, I have copied and pasted their web based charges for various raft sizes.

From them:

Europe’s largest dedicated Liferaft hire company have been renting Liferafts since 1979 to Leisure Yachtsmen and small Commercial Fishermen, later branching out into MCA approved Rafts for larger commercial vessels.


My beef is with the quoted costs, having presented them with the costs and included services from the servicing fraternity. Thier estimate went up by 49 pounds at least, even if you dont count the extra VAT.
They, as manufacturers must hve been fully aware of what would need replacing, and didnt even have to guess at a carriage charge.
I repeat, this is a rip off.
 
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