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Marina Delray advertises
themselves as an Authorized Mercury Marine service center. To an extent,
they are... Regardless of their qualifications, or lack thereof, after just one
experience with Marina Delray, I'll never be returning. Here's
why: On May 31, I took
my 37' Intrepid center console with triple Mercury Verado 275 outboards
to them for annual maintenance and to have a Mercury service bulletin
addressed. This was my first experience with Marina Delray. I figured
I'd give them a try since they were the closest to my home. They ordered
the warranty parts ahead of time and I took the boat to them as
scheduled.
A couple weeks later on June
17, (yes it took much longer than expected), I was told the boat was
ready - except for a bad engine FSM switch which they needed to order. They
said the part was covered under warranty and they'd call me when the part came
in.
I went to pick up the boat.
Pat Potak, Marina Delray's owner was sitting at the desk next to the
cashier. While the cashier was ringing up my
purchase, I asked Patrick why Marina Delray wasn't listed as an
authorized Verado service center on Mercury Marine's site. He indicated that they didn't have the computer program for
the Verado engines. He then assured me that they handled the work
simply by borrowing another dealer's computer
to pull the diagnostic info on my engines. After checkout, I proceeded to the
dock. The first thing I noticed was that one of my 35' dock lines was
missing and was substituted with some ratty dock line that had obviously
been used and abused for a long time. I specifically used my three dock
lines to secure my boat to their floating dock when I dropped it off. I
notified them immediately before leaving and told them to look for it
and have it returned.
Then upon returning home and
raising the boat out of the water on my lift, I noticed some damage to
the hull right at the edge of the traverse step on the starboard side.
My assumption was that this happened on haul-out. I sent an email on
August 1 notifying them of this damage and reminding them to look for
the missing dock line. I sent pictures of the damage on August 2.
About a week later, I took the
boat out for dinner. I noticed that the boat was running poorly. I felt
a vibration, and that usually meant a coil was bad.
The day after returning from
dinner, I emailed
again on September 6. I also noted the vibration problem which felt
like a cylinders was missing.
"I wanted to ping you
once again on the two issues previous emailed and add a new one into
the mix. Seems like I’ve got a vibration in the port motor. Probably
a failing coil or the like.
We’ve also got that pending warranty repair that I needed to bring
the boat back to you for. The warranty repair and the coil
replacement can be done with the boat in the water. With that plan,
perhaps you’d like to come by and see the hull damage while she sits
on my lift? That saves us from risking additional damage with
another haul-out at your place."
This time, I received a prompt
reply from Patrick Potak (pat@marinadelray.com):
"brian, i personally
hauled your boat out and made sure the boat was not lifted in a
compromising spot due to the steps in your hull. We have run into
this situation several times with other stepped bottoms. With regard
to your other mechanical issues I suggest you call another mercury
authorized service ctr"
This is not my idea of
customer service, and given that the marina owner, Mr. Patrick Potak
sent the email himself, there wasn't any use appealing his poor customer
service skills any higher within his organization.
Having no other choice,
I called Mercury Marine to (a) complain about the service I received,
and (2) to check to see whether the uninstalled float switch was
returned. At least that way, I could have it replaced by another service
center. I was flabbergasted to find out that Marina Delray actually
submitted the warranty claim and was reimbursed by Mercury Marine for
the repair that they couldn't possibly have completed (since I never
took by boat back there). Furthermore, based on my complaint,
Mercury marine called Marina Delray to verify the float switch repair,
and Marina Delray flat-out lied about completing the repair!
Let's recap the quality,
problems and ethics of Marina Delray:
- $50 dock line missing
from boat
- $300 damage to hull from
haul-out
- $200 on-site service call
from a real service authorized provider to replace the two bad coils
(yes, I said two bad coils) in the center engine.
- Learned that Marina
Delray is not properly equipped to diagnose & service Mercury Verado
4-stroke motors.
- Marina Delray lied to
Mercury Marine to get reimbursed for work they didn't do
- Zero accountability
It it worth mentioning that
prior to annual service at Marina Delray, my boat was running perfect
and it was without damage. It is also important to note that there were
only 80 hours since the previous annual service.
I've lost use of my boat for
most of the summer due to all the problems caused by Marina Delray, and
to add insult to injury, I had to pay another factory service center to
make it right.
As a consumer, you have
choices. Choose wisely by learning from the misfortunes of others.
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