beernutz
Member
WARNING: This is a vent thread. If people venting makes you hyperventilate, perhaps continuing to read this is not such a good idea. If you hate long posts, Cliff notes have been appended to the end for your convenience.
I picked up my boat from MarineMax today and on the way home decided to put it in the water to see how it was running. It has been with them since 6/1/2010 so 18 days in the shop.
I had originally taken it in to them on the front end of a four day trip where I was flying out of Pensacola because flights are so much cheaper than in Mobile. I had emailed them several days in advance and had spoken to service on the phone after they got my emails to be sure they knew what I wanted done. So I thought I'd kill two birds by driving the 70 miles from Mobile to Pensacola on the 1st, drop off the boat for the 4 days I'd be gone and (hopefully) pick it up after my return flight, all fixed up.
I had three basic issues I had emailed them to work on:
1. The boat wouldn't move when shifted into forward or reverse. Motor runs fine and it wasn't a prop issue so I took it in to let them figure it out.
It turned out to be just a bolt connecting a linkage cable had come loose which they re-tightened with lock-tight. It cost me the $50 diagnose labor to fix.
2. The temperature gauge showed I was running between 170 and 220. I strongly suspected it wasn't actually running that hot as I'd used an infrared temp gun on it while running and couldn't find any spot on the engine that was over 165.
After some run around resulting from another MarineMax shipping a replacement volt meter instead of a temp meter to them, they replaced the meter and told me it was registering under 170 when they tested it. It was about $140 to put int the new gauge. They had tested the boat and agreed with me that it wasn't actually running hot.
3. The boat wouldn't start reliably when only set to the cranking battery. I almost always had to move the battery switch to the Combined setting to get it to start even though both batteries are less than a year old and one was only put in 6 months ago.
It turns out, after much back and forth on the phone where MarineMax claimed they couldn't find what was wrong, that one of the batteries they'd previously put in it wasn't holding a charge. They replaced it for a $75 labor cost.
I also had them do a trailer check for $75 which resulted in me having to replace 3 trailer tires (not by MarineMax) before I made the trip back to Mobile, so this was probably money well spend.
My vent is because when I put the boat in the water on the way back to Mobile from Pensacola, I found that the temp gauge still reads exactly what it did before, about halfway between 170 and 220, and now my speedometer doesn't work at all. The starting problem does seem to have been fixed by the new battery so I will give them credit for that but I was so ticked off when I saw the speedometer and temp gauge I could have spit.
I called them from on the water and they did let me speak to one of their tech guys, although not the one who worked on my boat. He confirmed that my speedo problem was likely the result of someone just not having reconnected some cables. I was under the dash at the time and he tried to guide me a bit on how to do the reconnect, but it wasn't obvious how to fix it as the cable ends weren't easily reattached and I didn't want to f-up my electrical system while sitting in the middle of Mobile Bay.
I guess I'm most irked that their service guys know by now that it is pretty inconvenient for me to tow the boat the 140 mile round trip to have them work on it. They don't seem to want to put in the effort to make sure it is the way it should be before it gets handed back to me.
I was already annoyed with them because when I dropped the boat off on the 1st, after sending them the above mentioned email detailing what I wanted done, they had written up a service ticket for a 100 hour service and a trailer check.
So I had a "WTF is this?" conversation in service with them about the ticket which had my detailed problem descriptions stapled to the back. For some reason, they weren't sure what I wanted done to the boat even with the contents of my email stapled to the service ticket. Anyway before I left for my flight I thought I had things straightened out about what was to be done.
However, when I called them on the 3rd before my return flight brought me back to Pensacola, it appeared they still hadn't done anything on the boat as they were confused about whether they were to do the 100 hour service or not. Grrr--it felt like deja vu--didn't I have this conversation before? When I dropped off the boat I'd told them that I'd only run the engine 19 hours since I had bought the boat from them and that 100 hour service was a bit premature. Please just fix my three problems and do the trailer check was how I'd left it, or so I thought. That's what I get for thinking.
Cliff notes: Guy having work done at a MarineMax experiences exasperating lapses in communications and while some problems get fixed, the biggest expense was to replace something that turned out not to be broken and to add insult to injury he ended up with a non-functioning speedometer.
I picked up my boat from MarineMax today and on the way home decided to put it in the water to see how it was running. It has been with them since 6/1/2010 so 18 days in the shop.
I had originally taken it in to them on the front end of a four day trip where I was flying out of Pensacola because flights are so much cheaper than in Mobile. I had emailed them several days in advance and had spoken to service on the phone after they got my emails to be sure they knew what I wanted done. So I thought I'd kill two birds by driving the 70 miles from Mobile to Pensacola on the 1st, drop off the boat for the 4 days I'd be gone and (hopefully) pick it up after my return flight, all fixed up.
I had three basic issues I had emailed them to work on:
1. The boat wouldn't move when shifted into forward or reverse. Motor runs fine and it wasn't a prop issue so I took it in to let them figure it out.
It turned out to be just a bolt connecting a linkage cable had come loose which they re-tightened with lock-tight. It cost me the $50 diagnose labor to fix.
2. The temperature gauge showed I was running between 170 and 220. I strongly suspected it wasn't actually running that hot as I'd used an infrared temp gun on it while running and couldn't find any spot on the engine that was over 165.
After some run around resulting from another MarineMax shipping a replacement volt meter instead of a temp meter to them, they replaced the meter and told me it was registering under 170 when they tested it. It was about $140 to put int the new gauge. They had tested the boat and agreed with me that it wasn't actually running hot.
3. The boat wouldn't start reliably when only set to the cranking battery. I almost always had to move the battery switch to the Combined setting to get it to start even though both batteries are less than a year old and one was only put in 6 months ago.
It turns out, after much back and forth on the phone where MarineMax claimed they couldn't find what was wrong, that one of the batteries they'd previously put in it wasn't holding a charge. They replaced it for a $75 labor cost.
I also had them do a trailer check for $75 which resulted in me having to replace 3 trailer tires (not by MarineMax) before I made the trip back to Mobile, so this was probably money well spend.
My vent is because when I put the boat in the water on the way back to Mobile from Pensacola, I found that the temp gauge still reads exactly what it did before, about halfway between 170 and 220, and now my speedometer doesn't work at all. The starting problem does seem to have been fixed by the new battery so I will give them credit for that but I was so ticked off when I saw the speedometer and temp gauge I could have spit.
I called them from on the water and they did let me speak to one of their tech guys, although not the one who worked on my boat. He confirmed that my speedo problem was likely the result of someone just not having reconnected some cables. I was under the dash at the time and he tried to guide me a bit on how to do the reconnect, but it wasn't obvious how to fix it as the cable ends weren't easily reattached and I didn't want to f-up my electrical system while sitting in the middle of Mobile Bay.
I guess I'm most irked that their service guys know by now that it is pretty inconvenient for me to tow the boat the 140 mile round trip to have them work on it. They don't seem to want to put in the effort to make sure it is the way it should be before it gets handed back to me.
I was already annoyed with them because when I dropped the boat off on the 1st, after sending them the above mentioned email detailing what I wanted done, they had written up a service ticket for a 100 hour service and a trailer check.
So I had a "WTF is this?" conversation in service with them about the ticket which had my detailed problem descriptions stapled to the back. For some reason, they weren't sure what I wanted done to the boat even with the contents of my email stapled to the service ticket. Anyway before I left for my flight I thought I had things straightened out about what was to be done.
However, when I called them on the 3rd before my return flight brought me back to Pensacola, it appeared they still hadn't done anything on the boat as they were confused about whether they were to do the 100 hour service or not. Grrr--it felt like deja vu--didn't I have this conversation before? When I dropped off the boat I'd told them that I'd only run the engine 19 hours since I had bought the boat from them and that 100 hour service was a bit premature. Please just fix my three problems and do the trailer check was how I'd left it, or so I thought. That's what I get for thinking.
Cliff notes: Guy having work done at a MarineMax experiences exasperating lapses in communications and while some problems get fixed, the biggest expense was to replace something that turned out not to be broken and to add insult to injury he ended up with a non-functioning speedometer.
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