Somebody should tell Fairline that the world has changed

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I have had the same problems buying cars - sometimes I can look a bit untidy and you walk into Mercedes or Bentley dealership and you are not taken seriously. I have found the best thing to do, is book an appointment. And I think it is the same thing with Fairline at the boat show, if you go and see one of the salesman and say what you want to do – i.e. walk over the boat unattended and open all the drawers then they will not object (I have done this with my wife before as she thinks storage is important).
 
Nautorius I will be honest with you, that is a great deal and with the EURO to the £ better but still not looking good that is a fantastic deal
you need 130k + EUS for 2003 models, 34 Zaffiros keep there prices well here
to get a good deal in the med you need to find a British buyer, who paid it in UK£ in 2003, then that is possible
the good thing is that most of them in Italy, have Passarelle, Gen and ACon that is automatically more 30.000 EUROS of optionals
 
From my perspective, at the shows I've found:

Sunseeker: At SIBS no issues with the land based boats, although often have to que, but the big stuff in the water is practically out of bounds it seems /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

Sealine: Generally good, upgraded to Very good as soon as I showed them the invite they sent me!

Fairline: Don't think I've ever made it on one at a show.. maybe if I dived into the water by one they'd let me climb up on to the swim platform!

Princess: Couldn't be more helpful.. as long as I've wanted, sales guys around to point out things I might have missed + time for a chat.. now if only we could find one we want/can afford to buy now!!
 
In Fairline's defence.

At SIBS, a group of us had a look round the (then) new Squaddie 55 and ended up having drinks and two of us in our group had just bought new Princesses. I thought that they were very hospitable.

I think it depends on how you catch these guys. Get them on a bad day and you get a bad experience.
 
Just to repeat the point, last year I made an appointment with both Fairline and Princess to see their 45 foot (new) offerings. Princes responded by sending me two tickets. Got to the show, Fairline acted like an upmarket, orer rated, restaurant. Was escorted over their boat, and then they suggested that they were very busy! Princess, as has already been said, were the opposite.

Following the show, both companies called me. Fairline just acted like car salesmen. Princess were helpful over my options - so I bought one. And been delighted with both the boat and their after sales service both in Southampton and Spain.

No prizes where I'll go next time. (Economy and pound v euro permitting!)
 
Mike, i concur.

i too was around yesterday and only Fairline presented any barrier.

Its odd. Last year I went on one occassion with another forumite who had a fairline limo FOC from his City office to the show. We arrived and stood about on the stand for 10 mins and got fed up with the lack of attention. Did the show and went back to the stand to be driven back to W. London C/O Fairline.....How daft is that? Did not look at one fairline nor speak to a salesman.

I did hear yesterday that they are playing a few games now with suppliers too.

Shame they have lost the plot as in the main I like their stuff.


Did you look at the Furuno 3D - fab kit with no redraw time, raster and vector charting, digital radar. Commercial quality and performance IMHO.
 
Off the subject, you can get the same response when my wife tried to buy a car from a local dealer. We both went in, I wandered around and even after I said it's my wife wants to buy a car, he totally ignored her and carried on talking to me. We walked out and have never been back, and when we did buy it was a different make of car!
 
I have always found Fairline OK and have been treated well, they even sent me two free tickets for LIBS and I am not buying!

Mind you, I know what you mean. A few years ago my wife and I walked into a Mercedes showroom, I was a bit scruffy cant remember why, I think she had me working around the house! We were treated very badly, I was going to buy a new 350SL. So, same day I went to Jaguar and in 2003 I bought a new XKR.

Well that all seemed OK, they retained my business and a couple of years later I bought an XJR from them.

However, the depreciation on the Jags is huge when compared with Merc!

Not sure what the moral of this story is, but perhaps next time it may be prudent and financially beneficial to me if I were to change before going to see my Merc. dealer?

Mmmm this really shouldn't be the case I know, and it makes me somewhat angry, but thats life!
 
Just to back up the rest of the posts. We found the same at SIBS 08 didnt get on a Fairline which happen to be one of our favorite manufactures and we were selling some assets to buy one, the sales staff just stood talking to each other all day and getting paid whilst we stood behind the barrier looking on this has changed for the worse since the demise of Peters, we never did a show and not go on the Fairlines. Princess, Sealine, Azimut, Sunseeker, Bavaria, Cranchi, and the others were all very helpfull 10/10. Fairline 0 We will not forget there attitude we got the same response from Fairline Southampton, when we made an enquiry a guy called Trevor didnt take my name or address but I only had £150k to spend.
 
Not very impressive advertising for FL. What the are they thinking ? Are they just so far into their own self importance that customers no longer are important ?
Its a pity.
 
Keep up the posts - negative and positive (not many of them so far) - I am visiting their stand at LIBS on Monday.

I will print-off the P-trail and will make sure they get a copy! Although I expect they probably have seen this already!

People power - Time for change I think!
 
Not that I am in the market for a new boat, but reading things like this would certainly point me in the direction of anyone other than Fairline!
Shame on them.
Still I guess they are now reaping the results of what they have sown!
 
I've been to the show today and looked over the Princess P42 without any issues at all. In fairness to Fairline I looked over the Phantom 40 on their stand and had absolutely no problem getting on that boat and could easily have looked over a couple of others. I wasn't smartly dressed either!!
Also, at the last SIBS had no problem at all looking at the smaller range of Fairlines and found the stakk most helpful.
I also thought the Excel show to be well laid out and was busy enough to create a good atmosphere. I found it very easy to get to by car and park just a 2 minute walk from the entrance.
 
[ QUOTE ]
I've been to the show today and looked over the Princess P42 without any issues at all. In fairness to Fairline I looked over the Phantom 40 on their stand and had absolutely no problem getting on that boat and could easily have looked over a couple of others. I wasn't smartly dressed either!!
Also, at the last SIBS had no problem at all looking at the smaller range of Fairlines and found the stakk most helpful.
I also thought the Excel show to be well laid out and was busy enough to create a good atmosphere. I found it very easy to get to by car and park just a 2 minute walk from the entrance.

[/ QUOTE ]

I expect they had read this before your visit. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
Interesting........

We were invited to the show by Fairline (in the guise of Essex Boatyards who we bought our Doral from last year!!) with free tickets/VIP passes etc and were treated very well, including a guided tour of the Squaddie 72 - all £2.74million of her......like we were going to buy that!!!

The EBY guys at least were as good as always (we got tickets to SIBS too last summer) and we may yet end up doing a deal on a nearly new T38 or a slightly older T43 - respect to EBY - we shall see!

Having said that, we live 10 miles from Oundle and a lot of the locals in our pub work for Fairline...clearly from what we've been told, the market for the £1m plus boats s buoyant, but the lower/mid range around £3-500k is where they are getting pasted - no volume of sales in what is the "production line" end of their range. Makes sense - if you have £2.75m to spare for a boat, the cost of finance is not an issue and the the VAT savings are significant!!

Short working week....redundancies.....pay freezes and the like combined with lengthening supplier payment cycles tell the tale...

Interestingly, walking around LIBS today, we've never heard so many foreign accents - clearly the strength of the Euro is telling - all the main dealers had French, Spanish, German and Italian speakers on all their stands and I suspect that Fairline/Sunseeker/Princess all know where the money to keep them afloat this year is going to come from.
 
SWMBO and I did LIBS on Friday. The tickets were provided by EBY, courtesy of one of their regular sales guys, who normally sells the Avor range.

The show was quiet. Busiest time was mid-morning, very quiet by mid-afternoon. The EBY chap said a lot of exhibitors had decided not to go so they had made all the aisles wider, which heightened the feeling their were few people about.

The Fairline stand was the only one with the boats cordoned off. There were a lot of be-suited Failrline sales people, but they were all talking to each other. Our EYB contact (in his Avor shirt, not a suit and tie) tried to find someone to show us around, but bizarrely no-one was 'available' so he took us around. He couldn't have been more helpful. We looked at the Targa 52 and Phantom 48. The Targa we know quite well and like, Phantom 48 doesn't work for me, they've tried to squeeze too much in and the interior is too self-consciously modern and falls into Ikea-land.

Next to Sunseeker, where the stand had far more people milling around. Again the sale people were 'too busy', but we were shown around by their warranty manager and occasional delivery skipper, a young lady called Lindsey. She knew the products, talked to SWMBO more than me, knew how the boats handled in different conditions and even knew what went wrong. Showed us the Portofino 53 (dark interior, but classy) and the Predator 52 (excellent as a UK based sports boat, great accommodation, expensive).

As a matter of interest she told us that they had a briefing from the CEO of Sunseeker the first morning of the show. He had told them he didn't care who turned up, rich man or pauper, they'd paid to get in, they must like boats, "so you are to treat them seriously, be polite and show them around".
A couple of comments:
1. He is right, if you pay £20 to get in you should be able to get on the boats
2. As far as we could see the Sunseeker salesmen took the instruction to mean that the hospitality girls should let anyone onto the boats, but they were b*gger*d if they were going to spend any time other than with qualified leads (as in, they stood around talking to each other while punters walked on and off boats).
3. As a possible buyer (of a late model used), shoot me down, but I found it off putting to be checking the storage in the guest cabins while someone is pushing past yelling "Ere, Jim, look at this [--word removed--]*r, must cost a bl**ding fortune, wonder if they'll swap it for me Fiesta, arf arf!". On balance I'll go with point 1. if we wanted a VIP tour we could always arrange a visit to the factory and shouldn't expect exclusive access at a public show.

Then on the Princess. Stand was quiet, but the salesmen seemed keen to talk, and we were shown around both the V53 (most impressed, nicely judged, excellent visibility, well-laid out, even a lazarrete of sorts) and the new P50.

Jeanneau didn't have any of their larger boats, they told us LIBS wasn't their main show and we needed to go to Dusseldorf.

We walked back passed Fairline on the way out and as a businessman my heart sank at the number of sales people stood in small groups chatting. We picked up a suggestion that they'd sold a Targa 38 and had keen interest from some one to buy the new 55 that was on display.
 
[ QUOTE ]
I think it depends on how you catch these guys. Get them on a bad day and you get a bad experience.

[/ QUOTE ]I beg to disagree.
What Deleted User reports looks pretty much as a policy they decided to adopt, not as the idea of a single person in bad mood.
Mind, some restrictions at boat shows are understandable: not leaving unaccompanied people inside boats, and waiting when there's already more than a certain number of people onboard, are both acceptable principles.
But keeping a prospect customer waiting 'cause the dealer of his area is having lunch, went to the toilet, or whatever, that is plain unacceptable from the prospect viewpoint, and stupid from their part not to understand it.
 
I don't go to boat show much, only when I want summat, but with the Internet, that's not often. When we used to go, there were much bigger queues for the 50 ft boats than the boats we could afford at the time. No one wanted to look at the 25ft. Except us, so can understand some sort of censorship. Looks like most twats just want to look at stuff they cant afford. Beats me. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif
 
Agreed, I also said that some restrictions are understandable.
But requiring the visitor to wait for "his" dealer, that's nonsense.
Ok, it might be interesting for the manufacturer to keep track of how many leads the show generated for each of their dealers, in order to measure their sales performance afterwards.
But if the side effect is to upset prospect customers, what's the point?
Besides, genuine buyers are more likely to get nervous for wasting their time than... ermm... timewasters, obviously!
 
I have thought for some time Fairline are overpriced, they obviously have a high opinion of themselves, so not suprised to hear of this behaviour.

Oh and is it me or are their interiors darker.
 
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