Warranty & After Sales

[Guest]

Hi I am currently in my third year of my University Degree and as part of my disertation am looking at how the After sales and warranty service given by boat manufacturers influences further purchases. i.e. if you get good service will buy another boat from that manufacturer and if bad will you not.

In paticular I would like to hear some stories behind your answers etc and basically anything you may feel to be helpful to me. Do some companies go further than others in your experience? How quickly do you get responses? Many of you may have bad stories but I would also appreciate to hear the good ones as well.

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[BrendanS]

There's a big difference between manufacturer and dealers.

I'd recommend the manufacturer of my boat Regal to anyone. They have offered stunning service, and have repaired all sorts of stuff, even when you wouldn't have expected them.

They sent an engineer out from the US to handle repairs on several boats, and while he was working on mine noticed the CD/Radio was damaged, and ordered a new one from the US and fitted it. At the same time he replaced a battery operated Carbon Monoxide alarm with a new one that ran off the boat electrics. While fixing the original problem with the cuddy cabin filling with water, he went into the cuddy and cleaned all the fabric which had mildewed due to the water in there (I'd paid a fortune to have this professsionally done, and it wasn't a patch on what he did by hand). All of this was when the boat was about 3 years old.

Recently I'd guess they paid between 10 and 15k pounds to repair hull damage under a lifetime hull warranty.

Absolutely brilliant service, and I'd recommend Regal to anyone.

What I would not do, is buy a boat another boat from Gibbs Marine at Teddington, and I would advise everyone I know to avoid them. They are the Regal dealers I bought the boat off, and apart from one very helpful guy who has now left them, they didn't lift a finger to help, and their customer service can only be described as amongst the worst I've ever seen anywhere.

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[DepSol]

There is a diffference between the Boat warranty and the Engine Warranty. One is usually better han the other.

How about filling out your profile.

<hr width=100% size=1>Dom

2003 is going to be a good year for me

 

[byron]

<font color=blue>Even if I was as rich as Haydn I would never ever buy a new boat again. They come with a whole host of problems. Far better to buy a second hand one where the previous owner has had all the grief of getting faults fixed coupled with the added bonus of their having put loads of extras and goodies on. Having said that experienced boaters know that certain builders have a better reputation than others, some, like Broom will even take an interest if the boat is 10 years older, or even older.

<hr width=100% size=1>http://www.alexander-advertising.co.uk

 

[tcm]

Hi lurch.

I've bought new boats. After the first I made myself the same promise as Wise Byron, but then went and bought another new boat. At the smaller sizes a secondhand boat would certainly be the best idea, but larger boats sometimes do not exist in the required configuration. 1-3 year old boats would seem a good deal - a good lump of depreciation has gone but the boat isn't yet "old". For some larger boats, some say to get out of them before 6-7 years when gear replacement costs start to get significant.

No, I've not rebought from the same manufactuers. This is partly because they didn't have the boat I wanted. But also because I have stopped just short of going legal, but well inside the envelope of driving them bonkers with lists upon lists of problems, even minor ones, with the hope at least that they will attend to the major stuff.

Um, as a by the way, this sounds a right donkey doodle of a third year degree course subject for a dissertation? I mean, isn't this "bleedin' obvious" as stated in the first sentence of your question? You'll need access to proper statistics to get much further than that, won't you? Anyway, I supose that these days it's your money rather than a freebie, so praps just avoid the words "obviously" or "basically" in your text, and note the correct spelling of "dissertation"




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