GL: Marina overcharges on repairs, refuses to honor estimate

[Jeffrey Siegel]

> The threat of public embarrassment may help if friendly
> negotiations fail with the overcharging marina.
> ...
> Another option is to mention you will post all the 
> information on a WEB SITE for all to see and discover
> for years to come.
> ...
> Remember, I am suggesting this as a LAST RESORT 
> OPTION after you attempts at friendly negotiations 
> have failed.
> 

One of the best things about the Internet is that it has shifted some of the
power of any transaction to the consumer.  With a couple of keystrokes you
can compare prices of products from around the world.  You can quickly and
easily communicate with a manufacturer and get detailed information about a
product or service long before you purchase it.  And of course, you can read
from the experiences of others, probably the most valuable consumer tool
available.

I disagree that posting an experience should be a "last resort."  This is
exactly the type of thing that should be widely published.  If the boatyard
comes through in the end, the posting should be updated to reflect what
happened.  And the postings shouldn't just be negative ones.  Each person
might have a different experience with a merchant and it's only fair to get
the positive and negative issues in one place.

The statistics are pretty clear in ActiveCaptain's databases:

 5.7% received 1 star
 8.4% received 2 stars
23.4% received 3 stars
38.5% received 4 stars
24.0% received 5 stars

The bell curve doesn't show up here.  In general, experiences are good.  The
few bad ones are surely valuable to know about though!

We get about one call a month from a marina who has seen a negative review
about their facility in ActiveCaptain and wants us to change it.  One phone
call was particularly memorable:


Marina: There's a bad review about our marina in your system.  We'd like it
taken out.

Jeff: (looking up the review) What is the problem with the review?

Marina: It says that our bathrooms are dirty and the floats are in poor
condition.

Jeff: Well, are they?

Marina: Well, they could use repair but we'd prefer that it isn't broadcast
out to people.  We'd be willing to pay you to remove the review.

Jeff: Instead of paying us, why not just fix the problem and get a few good
reviews to balance the bad one?  Maybe some of your customers would end up
coming back for a second time.



I have never changed or removed a review.  The author of a review can go
back and edit their review and that happens all the time.  The key to all of
it is having those reviews help to make purchase decisions by others in the
future.  That is the way to persuade the 5.7% problem marinas to change
their ways.

One of the other things we do is to send out emails to marinas occasionally
(and experimentally).  For every marina, we maintain an email address.
That's for our captain's use and for our own too.  We have scripts that will
automatically email every marina with, let's say, a 1-star review and copy
the text of the review into the email.  I'm sure that most of these emails
end up in spam but some of them must be getting through.  Who knows, maybe
it's even ended up bringing attention to some problem at a marina that was
fixed because of it.


==================================
Jeffrey Siegel
M/V aCappella
DeFever 53PH
W1ACA/WDB4350
Castine, Maine

www.activecaptain.com
Content, Communications, Community

 
 
 

 
..