Sea Ray Quality and Customer Service

Ill give them another try but i have a feeling they are not calling back because they know my complaints. I have hinges coming off every year its a different one, electrical issues, tachometer issues. Sad part is marine max is in my marina amd i still cant get someone on site to look at it.

Couldn't answer that Mitch. However, a friend of mine does deliveries for Hyannis and he worked with the marina under sea rays direction for what I think was a week or so. Don't quote me on that. Finally sea Ray sent their own crew there to do tests and came up with the same results. I believe the only way they could get it to do anything close to plane was to shut off the auto trim.

Seems like most peoples problem with Sea Ray is Marine Max or dealer issue, not Sea Ray itself.

What is breaking or perceived as "crappy" or poor quality on the newer Sea Rays?

I've lucked out with Marine Max in MN. They've been able to help me for most of my needs with my 05'.

Although I don't have a DA, the main issue I have is my 05' WE is that whoever assembled it, didn't hone out the gel coat from the the holes when attaching the windscreen and other mounted components. This has caused gel coat cracking or spider webbing at most of the screw holes....pretty bummed out about that, but it's been a great boat overall.

ajcjr,

I have sent a private message to you. If you feel I can be of any assistance, please allow me to help.

Capt. R

ajcjr said:

Hi, Anyone else feel Sea Ray quality has come down. A friend of mine and myself both have 2015 boats (310 Sundancer & 350 SLX w triple outboards) and we were discussing boats with another friend and at the same time we both said dont buy a sea ray and started discussing other brands to look at.

On both of our boats we have the same stuff breaking year after year, crappy quality and engineering on parts that you use mostly all the time while on the boat. After paying good money for the boats we still cant believe the "bayliner" quality of these boats.

Add to the fact Sea Rays customer service is terrible and dealing with MarineMax is even worse. I called customer service back in May to complain about some items and the service from Marine Max, the customer service agent said she will get on them to have everything fixed. Well its September, stuff is still broke (poor marine max employees have no help and the bosses only care about Azimuts), plus the customer service agent at Sea Ray has me go to her voicemail and doesnt even return calls now.

So just curious if any former owners moved onto other boats and what would you recommend, i have had a few people ask me if i would recommend them and i say NO.

Also if anyone has an email or contact for the head of customer service at Sea Ray, id love to talk to them.

`AC

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Same experience with the customer service. They even made an appointment with me to call on a specific day and time and the person was unavailable. Multiple times did not return calls, in fact I never talked to the person. We were sold a boat with a hull defect and Sea Ray now wants to patch it up with some fiberglass, rather then replacing the boat, after it was discovered by us on day 5 after purchase. Terrible service.

Mindfullness Connect 2018 said:

Same experience with the customer service. They even made an appointment with me to call on a specific day and time and the person was unavailable. Multiple times did not return calls, in fact I never talked to the person. We were sold a boat with a hull defect and Sea Ray now wants to patch it up with some fiberglass, rather then replacing the boat, after it was discovered by us on day 5 after purchase. Terrible service.

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It never ceases to amaze me when people will ignore the terms and conditions of a purchase and then complain about them later.

This comes straight from your 2018 SPX owners manual:

Under the Limited Warranty, Sea Ray® covers: (a) structural fiberglass deck or hull defects
for the lifetime of the original ownership; (b) parts found to be defective in factory material or
workmanship within five (5) years of the date of delivery; (c) laminate blisters resulting from
defects in factory material or workmanship for five (5) years on a prorated basis.

Sea Ray®’s obligation under the Limited Warranty is limited to repair or replacement of parts
that are judged defective by Sea Ray® and does not include transportation, haul out, or other
expenses. The foregoing is the sole and exclusive remedy provided by Sea Ray®.

I hear you, but as a business owner, there are the legal requirements, then there are the times where you need to do what's right regardless of obligation.
We don't have enough information to know exactly what is going on.

You must be a Sea Ray official, being so familiar with the warranties. A warranty write up is a general guide line of agreement between buyer and manufacturer. It doesn’t reflect, that as a buyer, not familiar right away with the defect, that diagnosing the problem was delayed for weeks, beside the fact that Sea Ray should have more quality control of their structural products, that a buyer is not put into this situation. You are buying a new product and end up with a patched up repaired product for a lot money. Unacceptable. The hull was cheaply manufactured and now they are trying a cheap fix. Beside the fact, that it has hunted us the entire summer, being told to just wait and see what they wanted to do with the boat. Communication with the customer service sept was terrible, no detailed information provided. May be they just want to cover it up and rely on the customers stupidity. Sea Ray claims they stand behind they product, but here they are selling you a “Monday morning or lemon boat”. I guess that was just bad luck for us and they don’t really care about a “single” customer.

So much for warranty.

Stee6043 said:

It never ceases to amaze me when people will ignore the terms and conditions of a purchase and then complain about them later.

This comes straight from your 2018 SPX owners manual:

Under the Limited Warranty, Sea Ray® covers: (a) structural fiberglass deck or hull defects
for the lifetime of the original ownership; (b) parts found to be defective in factory material or
workmanship within five (5) years of the date of delivery; (c) laminate blisters resulting from
defects in factory material or workmanship for five (5) years on a prorated basis.

Sea Ray®’s obligation under the Limited Warranty is limited to repair or replacement of parts
that are judged defective by Sea Ray® and does not include transportation, haul out, or other
expenses. The foregoing is the sole and exclusive remedy provided by Sea Ray®.

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Stee6043 said:

It never ceases to amaze me when people will ignore the terms and conditions of a purchase and then complain about them later.

This comes straight from your 2018 SPX owners manual:

Under the Limited Warranty, Sea Ray® covers: (a) structural fiberglass deck or hull defects
for the lifetime of the original ownership; (b) parts found to be defective in factory material or
workmanship within five (5) years of the date of delivery; (c) laminate blisters resulting from
defects in factory material or workmanship for five (5) years on a prorated basis.

Sea Ray®’s obligation under the Limited Warranty is limited to repair or replacement of parts
that are judged defective by Sea Ray® and does not include transportation, haul out, or other
expenses. The foregoing is the sole and exclusive remedy provided by Sea Ray®.

Click to expand...

Mindfullness Connect 2018 said:

You must be a Sea Ray official, being so familiar with the warranties. A warranty write up is a general guide line of agreement between buyer and manufacturer. It doesn’t reflect, that as a buyer, not familiar right away with the defect, that diagnosing the problem was delayed for weeks, beside the fact that Sea Ray should have more quality control of their structural products, that a buyer is not put into this situation. You are buying a new product and end up with a patched up repaired product for a lot money. Unacceptable. The hull was cheaply manufactured and now they are trying a cheap fix. Beside the fact, that it has hunted us the entire summer, being told to just wait and see what they wanted to do with the boat. Communication with the customer service sept was terrible, no detailed information provided. May be they just want to cover it up and rely on the customers stupidity. Sea Ray claims they stand behind they product, but here they are selling you a “Monday morning or lemon boat”. I guess that was just bad luck for us and they don’t really care about a “single” customer.

So much for warranty.

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I wish I worked for Sea Ray. Though maybe not with the styling on their current big boats. I might choose Tiara instead...particularly since I live in Michigan. What a hoot that would be.

So we can safely assume 1.) you did not sea trial the boat pre-purchase and 2.) you did not understand the warranty pre-purchase. I've never bought a new boat (unlikely I will ever be able to afford one) but I've never bought a car without knowing the warranty and taking a test drive. Maybe I'm weird.

Unless you're a fiberglass expert I'm not sure you are qualified to determine that the proposed fix is "cheap". Have you had one or two local (non-Sea Ray) glass experts review what Sea Ray is proposing and comment? Have you asked a broker in the area whether or not this realistically will impact resale value? Do you understand the technical and structural differences between glass work done in the mold in the factory vs glass work done in a shop post-factory?

It sucks that you feel like you're not being taken care of. I assume at some level Sea Ray most certainly has metrics for customer satisfaction. You may be an outlier, you may be typical, you may be the majority. Who knows. I seriously doubt that they simply don't care. But are you able to be reasonably pleased? Some customers cannot be. It seams feasible that Sea Ray may have sent their best glass guy to look at your boat and he has 100% confidence he can repair it to factory spec's. If that is the case it is not reasonable to expect a new boat.

Maybe you can turn the corner of being a victim and make this a winning situation. Accept the glass repair and negotiate an extra year or two of full warranty on the boat due to "shaken confidence". Given the time of year ask that they store the boat for you, no cost, and do all of the annual maintenance while they work on the hull, no cost.

And cheer up, man. It's just a boat. First world problems. If you really hate her that much just drive it down the coast during the next hurricane and let your insurance company sort out the rest

I went thru 2 years of repairing replacing on my ex 2015 SLX with 49 things wrong. I had the same problems with the hull and the same experiences with SR. MM is a different story. Some of you know my experiences in detail thru PM and what kind of hell I went thru. I can guarantee ONE thing there are others in here that had/have a much bigger new boats then me and having similar problems. That is the reason why I am going to Tiara this time.

I’ve never bought a brand new boat either, but have heard enough complaints from buyers of new boats over the years to be convinced that if I were ever to buy one I would have a pre-purchase Survey done before signing on the dotted line.
Would do the same with a brand new house and have an Engineers inspection before I closed on it.
Relatively cheap insurance against aggravation when making big purchases.

OllieC said:

I've lucked out with Marine Max in MN. They've been able to help me for most of my needs with my 05'.

Although I don't have a DA, the main issue I have is my 05' WE is that whoever assembled it, didn't hone out the gel coat from the the holes when attaching the windscreen and other mounted components. This has caused gel coat cracking or spider webbing at most of the screw holes....pretty bummed out about that, but it's been a great boat overall.

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I wouldn't touch Marine Max (Rogers/Minnetonka) again unless I really, really had to. I bought my boat from their brokerage and paid their shop to do a mechanical survey. It came back with about $5k in miscellaneous mechanical needs (the biggest of which was the cabin door, which I knew about). It was good enough that I bought the boat, approved the repairs and moved forward.

Repairs done and I get an invoice for $2000 more than the original written estimate -- no more additional work or parts, they just didn't do the original estimate right, including mis-pricing their OWN parts in some cases by 50% below what they are. I had to fight them over the $2k, which they gave in on, but it took a mild threat of a lawsuit alleging collusion between brokerage and shop to get it done (plus state law prohibits repairs in excess of a written estimate without approval).

Last summer (my first with the boat) I have very uneven fuel consumption between engines, and I finally get hooked up with a good mechanic this summer -- as it turns out I have the bad painted Cool Fuel III modules on both engines and the starboard one is peeling badly. My new mechanic gets this sorted (including a bunch of warranty parts from Mercury, including fuel injectors for both engines!) and I'm wondering why Marine Max's mechanical survey didn't find any of this. It's something like $2500 worth of work. Had I known it needed to be done, along with the other stuff, I would have altered my bid on the boat further.

I know relying on a dealer-brokerage to do a mechanical survey is exposing myself to huge moral hazard, but my take is that they're borderline crooked/borderline incompetent and I would not ever choose to go back to them for anything. Maybe I would use the brokerage to buy a boat as the broker was a decent guy, but I would have my new mechanic do the survey so I could get a better idea what might be wrong.

A bit concerned after reading this thread. Has anyone had any issues with late model 280 Sundancers, 2014 thru 2016? Been on the hunt and might be getting ready to pull the trigger sometime this fall.

mobocracy said:

I wouldn't touch Marine Max (Rogers/Minnetonka) again unless I really, really had to. I bought my boat from their brokerage and paid their shop to do a mechanical survey. It came back with about $5k in miscellaneous mechanical needs (the biggest of which was the cabin door, which I knew about). It was good enough that I bought the boat, approved the repairs and moved forward.

Repairs done and I get an invoice for $2000 more than the original written estimate -- no more additional work or parts, they just didn't do the original estimate right, including mis-pricing their OWN parts in some cases by 50% below what they are. I had to fight them over the $2k, which they gave in on, but it took a mild threat of a lawsuit alleging collusion between brokerage and shop to get it done (plus state law prohibits repairs).

Last summer (my first with the boat) I have very uneven fuel consumption between engines, and I finally get hooked up with a good mechanic this summer -- as it turns out I have the bad painted Cool Fuel III modules on both engines and the starboard one is peeling badly. My new mechanic gets this sorted (including a bunch of warranty parts from Mercury, including fuel injectors for both engines!) and I'm wondering why Marine Max's mechanical survey didn't find any of this. It's something like $2500 worth of work. Had I known it needed to be done, along with the other stuff, I would have altered my bid on the boat further.

I know relying on a dealer-brokerage to do a mechanical survey is exposing myself to huge moral hazard, but my take is that they're borderline crooked/borderline incompetent and I would not ever choose to go back to them for anything. Maybe I would use the brokerage to buy a boat as the broker was a decent guy, but I would have my new mechanic do the survey so I could get a better idea what might be wrong.

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Fortunately for me I have lucked out on my experience. I 'do not' use them for service, just parts. We did get the WE at Marine Max in Newport Beach CA without issue in 2007., although they didn't fix a chip in the gel coat they promised to repair.

kiloil said:

I went thru 2 years of repairing replacing on my ex 2015 SLX with 49 things wrong. I had the same problems with the hull and the same experiences with SR. MM is a different story. Some of you know my experiences in detail thru PM and what kind of hell I went thru. I can guarantee ONE thing there are others in here that had/have a much bigger new boats then me and having similar problems. That is the reason why I am going to Tiara this time.

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There are going to be some issues with every boat. I bought our Tiara new and had a punch list that took a couple of seasons to work through. The latest was a small delamination on the anchor locker door. The boat is now 14 years old so I give Tiara a lot of credit for helping to fix it. The other thing Tiara is good about is where you have warranty work done. They have sent factory people to our storage marina to perform warranty work over the winter layup. They have also allowed me to pick marina personnel whom I trust to perform warranty work and pay the marina directly. When our boat was brand new, I complained that the A/C unit was too small. They installed a larger unit on our boat and came to our home to perform the swap. Then they changed the manufacturing spec on all 32 Opens so no one else would have the same issue. We have had work done at the dealer when cruising in northern Michigan. They are not perfect, but they take quality improvement seriously and are responsive to customer issues.

My next door neighbor just sold his 2017 Sea Ray because he was unhappy with the quality. He bought a 2018 Tiara that he seems to be enjoying. It's good that we have choices. Makes every company try harder.

I received a call from Sea Ray, hopefully these items will be corrected. Just so most do not think i am making a big deal about it, i have had at least 24 warranty requests to Sea Ray, 4 of them were the same issue. I understand things happen and once in a while something is missed.

Thanks to Rusty for getting in touch with me.

wind954 said:

A bit concerned after reading this thread. Has anyone had any issues with late model 280 Sundancers, 2014 thru 2016? Been on the hunt and might be getting ready to pull the trigger sometime this fall.

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make sure you are happy with the power. Before i had my 31 i had a 28, asked the salesman up and down if the power is enough for the boat and it wasnt. When you load it up you will be lugging and trying hard to get that motor on plain. If you need a 28 look for an older with twins.