Negative experience having boat painted and windows replaced

[Bobby Lex]

Here's my .02: Anything you do -- everything you do -- (including going public, and naming names) should be based on whether it will help your case or will hurt your case against the painting company.
And the person in the best position to advise you regarding that is your lawyer. That's what you're paying him/her for.

 

[Bryant]

Windows

For the last 15 months I have been living a nightmare after contracting a boat painting company in Florida's west to repaint my boat (Awlcraft) and replace the windows on my 1999 Ocean Alexander 426 Classico sedan. Both the paint job and the window replacement was a disaster. After 10 months and a lot of excuses it still was not finished and my boat was trashed. Finally, I gave up, brought in outside professionals to evaluate the situation. They were horrified at what they found and recommended getting the boat out of the yard fast. We reassembled the boat enough to take it to another yard. The new yard has had to completely strip the boat and start over. Of course this is going to cost a lot more than the original work since we had to remove most of the recent paint, all of the hardware, instruments and electronics. It should be completed sometime in January. I have a detailed accounting of the experience and and a Youtube video showing all the issues. I have posted it so it comes up very close to the businesses website. I have an action pending that I hope gets settled but I am not optimistic it will be. I wish he would just pay me back so I can move on with my life.

I have been boating for 50 years and have never had a boat painted before or a boat yard experience so negative.
My question is, is it appropriate for me to advise my fellow TF members of this experience and publish the details, the video and the name of the company? I wish I knew what I was getting into. I suspect others may like some warning too.

Consult very competent legal opinion before going public. This country no longer has a justice system, it has a "legal" system. You could wind up being hurt even worse. Seek the best counsel and if they say "ok" then blast the offending boatyard all over every website, blog, magazine etc that you can. Just be careful to format your post as "This was my experience with this company". No recommendations for boycott or any statements that could be considered malicious. You need a very high powered lawyer, specializing in contract law/admiralty law.

 

[BruceK]

Refer to post 5. It suggests, if I read it correctly, legal advice was to publicise online and the legal advisor was involved in preparing and publishing the video.

 

[cdb]

In fact I do have a very good attorney who has experience in this area. He is the one who arranged to have the YouTube video produced at the painters boat yard showing showing the boats actual condition after 10 months. It included a commentary by me and was followed by an experts commentary about the condition he found the boat to be in and what he believed needed to be done to correct it. The owner of the boat yard was presented with the video privately in advance. He chose to ignore it.

 

[timb7734]

For a great paint job see Tom Berryhill at Shearwater Marine located in Harbortown Marina in Fort Pierce. Not cheap but you get what you pay for in this department. Tom painted my boat in sections over the course of several years and all the sections matched! I have had two boats painted successfully but never tried to cut corners.

 

[Tingum]

Good luck