BarryH
Active member
This weekend I had to work, so no going to the boat for me. On my travels I dropped into a marina that has a brokerage section. Now we're looking for a bigger boat with a bit more accomodation seeing as the kids are growing quicker than those lysander fir tree things. Now I've been on one side of brokers in as much as I let one handle the sale of our exsisting boat, which hasn't sold. No wonder! If most brokerage staff are like the ones I came across today.
I arrived and parked the car.I went into the brokerage office and was quietly ignored by the 3 people sitting at desks. Ok I thought I'll just pick up a brokerage list and give it a quick scan. One or two boats there took my fancy. I approached one of the chaps sitting there reading a glossy boat mag. As I went to speak his phone rang. He picked up the phone and motioned that he'd be with me in a "tick". Ok so I'll have a look at all the nice piccy's of things I can't afford. Nice boats if you got a few hundred grand stuffed under the bed. While I was doing this I could see out of the corner of my eye that one of the other chaps was sizing me up. Now I knew exactly what was going through his mind. "hmm, wearing a fleece. boaty in a way, ah! jeans, not exactly clean and launderd".
At this point he looked down at his regulation blue Ben Sherman, stone coloured Chino's and regulation blue Dockside dekkies. The next thing that went through his mind was "oh ok, his wearing Dubarry dekkies, albeit "slightly worn". Then he spots the polo I'm wearing "Ah ha! Company logo" he thinks. Then you see him mulling over in his mind "can this guy afford that boat his looking at?" Well I answer this question for him while having a little game myself. Before he can think "nah, he can't" and return to looking down at his desk, I turn on him and say "that boat". Pointing in the general direction of an anonymous white boat. His face lit up with the thought of the commision and the hights of consumer utopia that it could take him to. Suddenly the mans alive. The coiled spring has been unleashed, sales patter at the ready, all those snippets of trickery from the training videos being loaded into the frontal lobes of his brain, just like a 17 pound shell being shoved into the breech of a field gun! Then I counter " Lovely boat, wish I could afford it". Deflated is not the word. From primed and ready to pin in a balloon. POP!
Ok so my cards are on the table, I haven't got a few hundred thousand stuffed in my back pocket. He munbles something about "fine craft"
"Anyway" says I. Stopping him in his tracks "I notice that you have a Twin thing 2500, is it possible to have a look round it".
"Er, yes, I'll get you the keys" Theres a small 10 min wait while the search for the keys start. Times passes, now three people are looking for the keys. Finally someone "in the know" appears. 'Oh the keys fro that are stuffed in the ........., its open'. So salesman ushers me to the door of the office. I step outside and ley him take the lead. The expensive gravel crunching under the poilished deckshoes. Then he stops. As if he would fall over a cliff if he took one more step. "its over there, 3rd pontoon down" Thats it, no more no less. I was alone. No guided tour extolling the virtues of said boat. Not a thing, the Spirit of selling had just disappeared. He vanished quicker than I could blink. I swear if we had tumbleweed in this country a couple of bits would have rolled silently by.
So I'm alone to look over this would be vessel that would carry us over the oceans of the world. Well the expanse of the solent and the channel !
So there it was. The highly polished sleekly formed vision in grp. NOT! The gel coat was battleship grey. It had the astetics of a badly creosoted garden shed. The canopy was new though. Pity it didn't fit properly. Charles Atlas would have had a problem getting all the studs fasten'd. Acrylic canvas just cant be stretched that much! So after all the huffing and puffing and wheezing I finally fall into the cockpit. Must give up smoking.
So the cockpit. Its big. So big I fail to notice the bucket of beer cans at the bottom of the steps upto the helm. After the ringing has stopped and my vision is not so blurred after cracking my head on the deck, which is teak by the way I've still got the splinters in my forehead, I make it to the helm. How the hell are you supposed to helm this thing. The hem seat is off its runners and is sitting on the sunpad. What the hell is the sunpad doing up here. What a crap layout.
So its down into the main cabin. This is nice and airy. Lots of room down here. I know theres lots of room 'cos if I had all those empty bottles on my boat I wouldn't be able to move!
So to the heads. I open the door gingerly waiting for the enevitable clank of more empty cans. I was pleasantly surprised. A nice new looking sea toilet sitting there. It doesn't even look as if its been used. Which, when you think about it, with all the cans and bottles about. Makes you wonder where all the consumed alcohol has ended up. On to the second cabin. I look but I can't find it. I can see the port lights on the outside, but inside nah. They just don't go all the way through the hull! It then dawns on me. Theres a curtain just to the left of the companion way steps. Arrgh! Thats not a cabin, thats a bloody dog kennel. Bogbrush would have trouble crawling in there. Let alone 2 medium sized kids. With the pending claustraphobia setting in I scarper back out to the cockpit. The relative wide open spaces of the cockpit have me somewhat more settled. While the thumping in my head receeds I find the engine cover in the floor. Ooh this could be interesting, never been on a twin engined boat before. Do i lift or not. Will there be half the worlds aluminium reserves waiting for me in the form of yet more beercans. Which reminds me to give that damn bucket a punt across the deck!
Deep breath, yank the thing open. There they are the two things I've been yearning for since I got the petrol bill for the last season. Two diesels.......'ang about they're red. This particular engine maker paints they're diesels green. They're bloody red. As red as the blood in my viens, eh Forbsie. They 'aint diesels. They're bloody petrols. Not are they only petrols. They're the same bloody lumps as the one thats caused me to have sleepless nights, trepidasiuos trips and a bloody great big headache for the last 6 years.
I check the sheet again. Yup, it says diesels. It don't say petrols. I know how to spell petrol and it don't start with a D. Further down the sheet it say "Type of fuel". The in big block capitals....PETROL..
At this point with the fear rising as fast as a spring tide on the Thames I flee screaming back to the coseted comfort of the expensive gravel, the regulation blue Ben Sherman's and the paper with the anonymous white boats hanging on the taut wire displays. There he is, the nemisis of the boat buying public. He's sitting there with a smug smile on his face. Satisfied. "that comment" has been suitably countered.
So brokers PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, tidy the friggin' things up before you present them for sale. Give'em a clean. Get the facts right on the spec sheets. Make it look like you actually want the thing to sell. If this was the car trade you'd be out of business. You'd be wearing 3/4 length sheepskin coats with gold identity bracelets and fake snakeskin shoes and we'd be callin' you Ar'fur behind yer back.
In short, NOW I KNOW WHY MY BOAT IS STILL MINE AND NOT SOMEONE ELSES. And finally SHOW SOME BLEEDIN' INTEREST IN YOUR CUSTOMERS!!!!
NB please note that I have written this while totally wrecked on a bottle of Jura (well not a whole bottle) and the names have been changed to protect identities and by the time I've sobered up none of it will be relevant
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I arrived and parked the car.I went into the brokerage office and was quietly ignored by the 3 people sitting at desks. Ok I thought I'll just pick up a brokerage list and give it a quick scan. One or two boats there took my fancy. I approached one of the chaps sitting there reading a glossy boat mag. As I went to speak his phone rang. He picked up the phone and motioned that he'd be with me in a "tick". Ok so I'll have a look at all the nice piccy's of things I can't afford. Nice boats if you got a few hundred grand stuffed under the bed. While I was doing this I could see out of the corner of my eye that one of the other chaps was sizing me up. Now I knew exactly what was going through his mind. "hmm, wearing a fleece. boaty in a way, ah! jeans, not exactly clean and launderd".
At this point he looked down at his regulation blue Ben Sherman, stone coloured Chino's and regulation blue Dockside dekkies. The next thing that went through his mind was "oh ok, his wearing Dubarry dekkies, albeit "slightly worn". Then he spots the polo I'm wearing "Ah ha! Company logo" he thinks. Then you see him mulling over in his mind "can this guy afford that boat his looking at?" Well I answer this question for him while having a little game myself. Before he can think "nah, he can't" and return to looking down at his desk, I turn on him and say "that boat". Pointing in the general direction of an anonymous white boat. His face lit up with the thought of the commision and the hights of consumer utopia that it could take him to. Suddenly the mans alive. The coiled spring has been unleashed, sales patter at the ready, all those snippets of trickery from the training videos being loaded into the frontal lobes of his brain, just like a 17 pound shell being shoved into the breech of a field gun! Then I counter " Lovely boat, wish I could afford it". Deflated is not the word. From primed and ready to pin in a balloon. POP!
Ok so my cards are on the table, I haven't got a few hundred thousand stuffed in my back pocket. He munbles something about "fine craft"
"Anyway" says I. Stopping him in his tracks "I notice that you have a Twin thing 2500, is it possible to have a look round it".
"Er, yes, I'll get you the keys" Theres a small 10 min wait while the search for the keys start. Times passes, now three people are looking for the keys. Finally someone "in the know" appears. 'Oh the keys fro that are stuffed in the ........., its open'. So salesman ushers me to the door of the office. I step outside and ley him take the lead. The expensive gravel crunching under the poilished deckshoes. Then he stops. As if he would fall over a cliff if he took one more step. "its over there, 3rd pontoon down" Thats it, no more no less. I was alone. No guided tour extolling the virtues of said boat. Not a thing, the Spirit of selling had just disappeared. He vanished quicker than I could blink. I swear if we had tumbleweed in this country a couple of bits would have rolled silently by.
So I'm alone to look over this would be vessel that would carry us over the oceans of the world. Well the expanse of the solent and the channel !
So there it was. The highly polished sleekly formed vision in grp. NOT! The gel coat was battleship grey. It had the astetics of a badly creosoted garden shed. The canopy was new though. Pity it didn't fit properly. Charles Atlas would have had a problem getting all the studs fasten'd. Acrylic canvas just cant be stretched that much! So after all the huffing and puffing and wheezing I finally fall into the cockpit. Must give up smoking.
So the cockpit. Its big. So big I fail to notice the bucket of beer cans at the bottom of the steps upto the helm. After the ringing has stopped and my vision is not so blurred after cracking my head on the deck, which is teak by the way I've still got the splinters in my forehead, I make it to the helm. How the hell are you supposed to helm this thing. The hem seat is off its runners and is sitting on the sunpad. What the hell is the sunpad doing up here. What a crap layout.
So its down into the main cabin. This is nice and airy. Lots of room down here. I know theres lots of room 'cos if I had all those empty bottles on my boat I wouldn't be able to move!
So to the heads. I open the door gingerly waiting for the enevitable clank of more empty cans. I was pleasantly surprised. A nice new looking sea toilet sitting there. It doesn't even look as if its been used. Which, when you think about it, with all the cans and bottles about. Makes you wonder where all the consumed alcohol has ended up. On to the second cabin. I look but I can't find it. I can see the port lights on the outside, but inside nah. They just don't go all the way through the hull! It then dawns on me. Theres a curtain just to the left of the companion way steps. Arrgh! Thats not a cabin, thats a bloody dog kennel. Bogbrush would have trouble crawling in there. Let alone 2 medium sized kids. With the pending claustraphobia setting in I scarper back out to the cockpit. The relative wide open spaces of the cockpit have me somewhat more settled. While the thumping in my head receeds I find the engine cover in the floor. Ooh this could be interesting, never been on a twin engined boat before. Do i lift or not. Will there be half the worlds aluminium reserves waiting for me in the form of yet more beercans. Which reminds me to give that damn bucket a punt across the deck!
Deep breath, yank the thing open. There they are the two things I've been yearning for since I got the petrol bill for the last season. Two diesels.......'ang about they're red. This particular engine maker paints they're diesels green. They're bloody red. As red as the blood in my viens, eh Forbsie. They 'aint diesels. They're bloody petrols. Not are they only petrols. They're the same bloody lumps as the one thats caused me to have sleepless nights, trepidasiuos trips and a bloody great big headache for the last 6 years.
I check the sheet again. Yup, it says diesels. It don't say petrols. I know how to spell petrol and it don't start with a D. Further down the sheet it say "Type of fuel". The in big block capitals....PETROL..
At this point with the fear rising as fast as a spring tide on the Thames I flee screaming back to the coseted comfort of the expensive gravel, the regulation blue Ben Sherman's and the paper with the anonymous white boats hanging on the taut wire displays. There he is, the nemisis of the boat buying public. He's sitting there with a smug smile on his face. Satisfied. "that comment" has been suitably countered.
So brokers PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, tidy the friggin' things up before you present them for sale. Give'em a clean. Get the facts right on the spec sheets. Make it look like you actually want the thing to sell. If this was the car trade you'd be out of business. You'd be wearing 3/4 length sheepskin coats with gold identity bracelets and fake snakeskin shoes and we'd be callin' you Ar'fur behind yer back.
In short, NOW I KNOW WHY MY BOAT IS STILL MINE AND NOT SOMEONE ELSES. And finally SHOW SOME BLEEDIN' INTEREST IN YOUR CUSTOMERS!!!!
NB please note that I have written this while totally wrecked on a bottle of Jura (well not a whole bottle) and the names have been changed to protect identities and by the time I've sobered up none of it will be relevant
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