Purchase Frustrations

So what have been you frustrations with purchasing a boat? What drives you nuts? What causes you to say "forget it?" My 3:

1) Non-responsive brokers/assistants. Or guys that don't listen, follow up, etc.
2) Boats not "ready" for sale. You know pictures from 3 years ago.
3) Surprises that make you say "WTF" -- stuff easily known, but not otherwise revealed.

What say you?

Owners/brokers that lie about the condition.

One of my pet peeves (really for anything for sale) is when the seller doesn't bother to clean out their crap or take care of obvious housekeeping chores. I mean really, if you are going to ask for 10s of thousands of dollars, can you not be bothered to vacuum the carpets, clean out the sink or (I kid you not) flush the toilet?

My favorite is these adds where they say something like "Just needs minor cleaning".

bobeast said:

One of my pet peeves (really for anything for sale) is when the seller doesn't bother to clean out their crap or take care of obvious housekeeping chores. I mean really, if you are going to ask for 10s of thousands of dollars, can you not be bothered to vacuum the carpets, clean out the sink or (I kid you not) flush the toilet?

My favorite is these adds where they say something like "Just needs minor cleaning".

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I looked at a 370 Sundancer, advertised as "turnkey" listed by a broker, "owned by a pilot who was a freak about maintenance" We scheduled the showing 2 days in advance, and drove 2 1/2 hours each way to see the boat. Empty liquor bottles everywhere, fruit flies in the v berth, canvas leaked so bad they had towels covering the helm seat, but those had been wet so long they had been molding. Toilet wasn't even flushed. Seriously.

The seller had already bought another boat and was letting his kid live on this one for the summer. The boat was a complete mess. Despite that we made an offer that reflected all of the work required to get the boat into shape and stored for the winter, the seller was offended. The boat sat l winter and into the spring, finally switched brokers and sold.

Dodged a bullet, we ended up with a much better boat.

Golfman25 said:

So what have been you frustrations with purchasing a boat? What drives you nuts? What causes you to say "forget it?" My 3:

1) Non-responsive brokers/assistants. Or guys that don't listen, follow up, etc.
2) Boats not "ready" for sale. You know pictures from 3 years ago.
3) Surprises that make you say "WTF" -- stuff easily known, but not otherwise revealed.

What say you?

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All of the above plus a dirty boat, cluttered cabin with owners junk all over the place, fouls smells and things that don’t work as they should, especially things that are easy fixes.
Dishonest brokers or those that keep wasting your time with things you aren’t interested in piss me off too.
I’m the same way when house shopping.

I think it is reprehensible that brokers charging 10% or more to sell a boat rarely feel obligated to keep them ready to show. I'm sure that if I were to list a boat for a seller I would want to keep it as clean as possible to impress anyone I showed it to. I'm not seeing a payday until I have a sale after all! It seems that so few marine service businesses are run in a truly professional manner. Its like the business is more akin to a hobby, quite bazar IMHO.
Carpe Diem

Carpediem44DB said:

I think it is reprehensible that brokers charging 10% or more to sell a boat rarely feel obligated to keep them ready to show. I'm sure that if I were to list a boat for a seller I would want to keep it as clean as possible to impress anyone I showed it to. I'm not seeing a payday until I have a sale after all! It seems that so few marine service businesses are run in a truly professional manner. Its like the business is more akin to a hobby, quite bazar IMHO.
Carpe Diem

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There are good brokers and bad brokers...

Well when we bought our Crownline we did not go through a broker, In the end I almost walked away due to the seller being so difficult. Sort of knew the boat as they were docked a few boats away in 2015 but the boat sat in storage at a local shop from then until we bought it a year ago. Seller knew us so the first couple times we looked at it we were by ourselves. We know the owner of the shop it was at too. After a couple of visits we make a verbal offer with contingencies and seller agrees. So I write up the contract and the seller wasn't in a hurry to sign it. That took a couple of weeks. Seller tells the shop to get it ready for sea trial. Shop replaces impeller, checks everything out and installs 2 new batteries (surveyor said he would need 2 batteries to test all electrical systems). Try to schedule the surveyor and seller together but seller keeps 'having plans' so this takes a couple of weeks. Finally get that sorted and get the survey and sea trial done. Oh, and seller wanted me to pay to re-winterize it if I didn't buy it under any circumstances. I said no and she said well you aren't sea trialing it then. So I wrote it up that if everything went well and I still didn't buy it then I would pay to re-winterize. Survey and sea trial go well. Surveyor tests the shore power cord and buyer asks why. She said the cord doesn't go with the boat. Said it didn't come with one when they bought it. I asked what they needed it for and they said they may buy another boat down the road. So we take the boat back to the shop and wait for the surveyors report. Seller calls me screaming about the 2 new batteries and who authorized that. I told her in talking to the shop owner he said he had to put a battery in. I told him surveyor needed 2 and thats all that was said. Seller freaks out and refuses to sell us the boat now because she thinks we pulled one over on her. In the end I agree to pay for the 2 new batteries and 1/2 the cost for the shop to get it ready for sea trial. So now we have to coordinate banks to pay off her loan and I financed so that was another hurdle. She took her time getting the payoff and logistics of what was needed for paying her loan and getting the title. I finally told her if that boat was not in my name by the end of the following week I was walking away. About 3 weekends in a row she had plans so didn't do anything that needed done for us to proceed. And in the end I told her if I was paying for all that stuff she should have paid for then I want the shore power cord. O got it...lol. Ultimately I still got a good deal and even with paying for brand new canvas I'm still ahead. Oh, and she lost the title for the trailer so I had to wait on that. It was a brand new trailer she just bought a few months earlier and she already lost the title. I told her she wasn't getting the rest of the money until I got that title. And after I took possession I found the Dometic AC pump elbow had been snapped off and whoever did it used 4200 or something to 'glue' it back on so I had to spend $300 on a new pump.

Yeah boatman. I decided that I would only look at boats in the water, assuming they would at least be ready to go. I also decided to shy away from private sellers with loans = PIA.

I have a saying at work -- I tell my people don't make it hard to do business with us. It's surprising how hard it is to do business with some people.

Filthy boats.

Full black water tanks. WTF??

Owners who refuse to remove the shrink wrap unless they have a deposit.

Prices that reflect that none of the above are true.

I don't know how many boats are bought and sold through CSR, but after tiring of the disappointments mentioned above, we bought ours through a CSR member who was refereed to us through another CSR member.

BOB TYSON said:

I don't know how many boats are bought and sold through CSR, but after tiring of the disappointments mentioned above, we bought ours through a CSR member who was refereed to us through another CSR member.

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I would expect that most regular posters on CSR would have nice, well maintained boats to sell.

For sale....low hours, washed weekly, shows pride of ownership.

Golfman25 said:

Yeah boatman. I decided that I would only look at boats in the water, assuming they would at least be ready to go. I also decided to shy away from private sellers with loans = PIA.

I have a saying at work -- I tell my people don't make it hard to do business with us. It's surprising how hard it is to do business with some people.

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I found private sellers to be a PIA too and wound up steering clear of them at the end of my search.

People that won't negotiate rationally about price, which includes owners and brokers.

The broker I bought my boat from had a stock line of "well, it is a used boat" to explain literally everything from expected wear from use to premature wear and lack of maintenance. I get that the cockpit carpet on a 10 year old boat is just worn from use, but a lot of mechanical items wear worse when they're not maintained properly.

If a visual or very basic mechanical inspection indicates a lack of maintenance, part of my bid below asking price is to cover retroactive regular maintenance I will need to perform to get the boat at a known state of good repair. You can say "no" to any offer, but "no, it's a used boat" when the needed maintenance isn't baked into the asking price is just obnoxious bargaining.

In my case, the owner was just some rich guy who wanted a boat at his home near his corporate office, but treated it as kind of a seasonal accessory and had to unload it when he got canned in a corporate restructuring. He thought he could own it for 3 years, do nearly nothing maintenance wise, and unload it for what he paid for it PLUS his brokerage cost.

How about struggling to get service records. The marina offered to provide them. All the owner has to do is call. Nada.