Things seem to be going from bad to worse. I got a call from the company who's boat lifts I sell, the gist of which was that one of the marinas we work at called with some serious complaints and expressed that they were considering not allowing us to put lifts in any longer. I've had a 20 year relationship with this marina, the current manager has been there for about 10 of that, never heard one word from them about any unhappiness with us. I'm not at all pleased that they'd go to Corporate and complain about me without giving me a ring first. The whole issue I think stem from one unhappy customer, can I bore you with the details?
ten years ago we sold another company's lifts. This customer bought a 12,000 lb lift from us. about 6 years ago we dropped that company due to an enormous amount of problems with thier product, ie. leaking tanks. (those were steel and non-repairable) We didn't want to sell products we weren't confident in and we were spending a great deal of time replacing tanks. Some years go by, this customer buys a much larger boat and I take the hoist out, combine it with more tanks and other parts from our new company's hoists and make it capable of lifting 24,000. Eventually the original company's steel tanks leak. They are warrantied for life from that original company but it is no longer the same lift, it's a custom contraption engineered by some desert hillbilly (that's me). There's no way they are going to honor the warranty if they see the hoist. Put a dodge motor of twice the capacity in your chevy and see if chevy will still warranty their transmission. good luck.
So here's what I propose to the customer: In the interest of saving you the huge investment you have in this hoist, you get company #1 to send out some warranty tanks, I will replace them. It could take almost a full week to get the hoist out, torn apart, (he's got a full wood deck on top that will need to come apart piece by piece and be numbered etc...for re-assembly). reassembled and re-installed. Company #1's bolts that have been under water will need to be either cut or broken, about half can't be accesed for cutting, breaking is extremely difficult. The entire contraption will need to be broken down entirely and re-assembled with the new tanks. This will take probably 30-40 hours to complete, working on old large custom hoists is the most difficult and most aggravating of all the work we do. We hate it and we do not want to do it even in the slightest. The issue has nothing whatever to do with our workmanship, company #1's steel tanks all rust eventually.
I explained that Company #1 does honor their warranties and they regularly send people out to do the work, which would be done for free, however if they saw the hoist they'd neither do the work nor send the tanks, I guarantee it. And they will not pay me to do the work since I am their competition. We will do the work if you simply pay my guys their time. Not what I charge, just what I pay them, you can pay them cash or check directly. The customer agreed to this entirely. That is until the work was done. Then he refused to pay my guys until he got re-embursed from company # 1. Company #1 explains that it is unconscionable that I should charge anything for warranty work, they always cover their warranties and they never charge (of course they've not seen the hoist). So now, me shutting down business for one week for no benefit to myself, the only reason being to save this guy's $30K hoist from being junk gets turned into me taking advantage of him. He had been really unnerving me through the process, called me twice a day to complain the it was taking too long, his boat has now been sitting in the water for 4 whole days, etc... Sat on a chair on the dock drinking margaritas and instructing my guys how to do things and complaining to them about how long it was taking. (between calling his wife a bitch and a whore apparently) Then he says he's decided he'll pay once company #1 re-emburses him.
I flipped out. I absolutely shouldn't have but I totally tore into the guy. The guy goes and complains to the marina (and probably the park service) about me. Also gets some other folks with hoists to go express totally bogus (I can only assume as of yet) complaints about us. All this guy does is sit at his boat and hold an open bar for anyone on the docks, he knows everyone there and has nothing but time on his hands. Probably not the right guy to get pissed at if I were thinking clearly.
So anyhow, thanks for reading. This coupled with last week's entry has me at the brink of a break down. For the first time in 5 1/2 years of being sober I'm really really craving some easy escape. I'm not going to drink or anything, but I want my head turned off and I don't know productive ways to do that. I'm still sick with a flu, but I'm going to pump myself full of meds and take a long cold ride in the desert. There's a desert race out a Primm this weekend, maybe I'll go check it out or something. And I should probably change the headline at the top of this page, things were going just fine when I put it there.
ten years ago we sold another company's lifts. This customer bought a 12,000 lb lift from us. about 6 years ago we dropped that company due to an enormous amount of problems with thier product, ie. leaking tanks. (those were steel and non-repairable) We didn't want to sell products we weren't confident in and we were spending a great deal of time replacing tanks. Some years go by, this customer buys a much larger boat and I take the hoist out, combine it with more tanks and other parts from our new company's hoists and make it capable of lifting 24,000. Eventually the original company's steel tanks leak. They are warrantied for life from that original company but it is no longer the same lift, it's a custom contraption engineered by some desert hillbilly (that's me). There's no way they are going to honor the warranty if they see the hoist. Put a dodge motor of twice the capacity in your chevy and see if chevy will still warranty their transmission. good luck.
So here's what I propose to the customer: In the interest of saving you the huge investment you have in this hoist, you get company #1 to send out some warranty tanks, I will replace them. It could take almost a full week to get the hoist out, torn apart, (he's got a full wood deck on top that will need to come apart piece by piece and be numbered etc...for re-assembly). reassembled and re-installed. Company #1's bolts that have been under water will need to be either cut or broken, about half can't be accesed for cutting, breaking is extremely difficult. The entire contraption will need to be broken down entirely and re-assembled with the new tanks. This will take probably 30-40 hours to complete, working on old large custom hoists is the most difficult and most aggravating of all the work we do. We hate it and we do not want to do it even in the slightest. The issue has nothing whatever to do with our workmanship, company #1's steel tanks all rust eventually.
I explained that Company #1 does honor their warranties and they regularly send people out to do the work, which would be done for free, however if they saw the hoist they'd neither do the work nor send the tanks, I guarantee it. And they will not pay me to do the work since I am their competition. We will do the work if you simply pay my guys their time. Not what I charge, just what I pay them, you can pay them cash or check directly. The customer agreed to this entirely. That is until the work was done. Then he refused to pay my guys until he got re-embursed from company # 1. Company #1 explains that it is unconscionable that I should charge anything for warranty work, they always cover their warranties and they never charge (of course they've not seen the hoist). So now, me shutting down business for one week for no benefit to myself, the only reason being to save this guy's $30K hoist from being junk gets turned into me taking advantage of him. He had been really unnerving me through the process, called me twice a day to complain the it was taking too long, his boat has now been sitting in the water for 4 whole days, etc... Sat on a chair on the dock drinking margaritas and instructing my guys how to do things and complaining to them about how long it was taking. (between calling his wife a bitch and a whore apparently) Then he says he's decided he'll pay once company #1 re-emburses him.
I flipped out. I absolutely shouldn't have but I totally tore into the guy. The guy goes and complains to the marina (and probably the park service) about me. Also gets some other folks with hoists to go express totally bogus (I can only assume as of yet) complaints about us. All this guy does is sit at his boat and hold an open bar for anyone on the docks, he knows everyone there and has nothing but time on his hands. Probably not the right guy to get pissed at if I were thinking clearly.
So anyhow, thanks for reading. This coupled with last week's entry has me at the brink of a break down. For the first time in 5 1/2 years of being sober I'm really really craving some easy escape. I'm not going to drink or anything, but I want my head turned off and I don't know productive ways to do that. I'm still sick with a flu, but I'm going to pump myself full of meds and take a long cold ride in the desert. There's a desert race out a Primm this weekend, maybe I'll go check it out or something. And I should probably change the headline at the top of this page, things were going just fine when I put it there.
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
What A dickhead. I'm sorry to hear that you have to deal with someone like that.
You could always take up skydiving...nothing like jumpping out of a prefectly good airplane to clear your mind.
Saw that stinky piece of shit chopper. NASCAR, rednecks, non-functional motorcycles... a short list of things I hate.