RANT!...WASTE MARINE...

[paladin]

Now dawggonnitt.....I like to think of myself as a pretty calm person...dunno get upset by a lot of things or a lotta people....BUT...
I would visit Boat-U.S. regularly before the Waste marine acquisition...visited three or four times after...I guess the old Boat U.S. employees are being pased out and replaced. I went to Waste marine on rare occassions...one being after the recent hurricane to purchase a couple of BIG batteries to run an inverter for the refrigerator...we wuzz without lights for 2 weeks.
WELLLLL....I gets in the mail these "REWARD" certificates worth $10 each to spend on anything at waste marine...went back and redeemed three of them...a a few days later went back to use another one...the Manager? told me "sorry...the comptroller said not to accept these anymore".
And it happened a second time...so I guess these so called rewards are as worthless as...uh...udders on a boar hog......next trip...BIG sale.....nice flyer comes in mail...visit store...pick an item that was marked down (managers tag on it) came locked in glass case, manager has key, item was handed to me by manager...went to checkout...young lady rings up full price. I suggest that she look at the managers mark down tag and her reply..."This isn't a mark down item, I figured that you switched the tags".........NEVER....and I say NEVER again.....
Defender industries or someone else but not Boat U.S. or Waste Marine.......

[Dave Fleming]

Thank Goodness I have nice, small, well stocked, locally owned, Downwind Marine right around the corner. Waste is a couple of blocks away and they just enlarged the place, gag.

[ 08-03-2004, 11:45 AM: Message edited by: Dave Fleming ]

[Gresham CA]

Just a couple of weeks ago I got an email from Westmarine about a discontinued item sale. I went and bought a VHF that was marked $80 and the sales girl says "This was a display. Is that OK?" I told her that I should get an additional 10% off. She gave me 10% of the full price. :D I still go to Boater's World more though.

[Frank E. Price]

Have you tried SailNet.com? For mailorder I've found them generally cheaper than Waste.

Frank

[Figment]

I'm not a fan of WM, but I haven't heard of many experiences like you've reported. Maybe it's a reigonal thing in terms of staffing? I usually find that there's ONE person in the store at any given time who actually knows what they're doing, the trick is to find that person and ignore the others.

My personal pet peeve with these places:
Goddammit, if you don't want me to cut my own length of hose, why do you hang a hacksaw on the shelf???!!!
Don't come running up to me yelling "WHOA WHOA WHOA SIR PLEASE LET ME DO THAT FOR YOU" when I'm 90% through the cut, and then finish it off crooked!

Ditto for the wire-by-the-foot and cordage-by-the-foot sections!

[SC-Lion]

Well, Waste Marine you say. This is a rant that has been building in me for a while. The corporate headquarters is 20 minutes away from me, the corporate power boat is behind me in the marina, I’ve owned their stock, and I’m friends with the local retail store manager. Waste has changed for the worse over the last few years and has become near useless. They hired some big wig from K-Mart at corporate to reorganize the retail sales and are now heading down a path of destruction.

It’s been a slow decline but the final straw for me was a couple of months ago. I had just gotten the new catalog and went down to the store to order a new Vetus anti-siphon valve for my diesel. So I grabbed a few things in the store walked up to the counter and asked them if the Vetus part was in stock. It wasn’t in stock, they didn’t have it in their warehouse, sales women said they would need to get it from the manufacture. No problem.

Then they demanded that I pre-pay for the part. I said it’s a normally stocked part in your catalog why should I have to prepay to get one in the store? “Policy, new policy…”, “You can come back tomorrow and talk to the manager” (they know I know her well), but I really don’t want to mix my anger with WM and my friend. Finally I said fine I’ll prepay. I had the part number but I didn’t write down the price, somewhere around 40 bucks is all I remembered. “it should be in next week” I’m told. So three weeks later without a call I grab my receipt and call, “should be another week”. Finally a week later I call again and it’s there at the store. They didn’t call me, I had to call them.

Now the fun begins. I notice on the receipt that it was 45 bucks. So I plan to go pick it up and complain that the catalog just came out and it’s already 10% more. When I go to pick it up I’m told that the price is still 39.99, but that I’ve been charged a 5 dollar special order fee. What! It’s in your catalog. It’s not in red ink (as special order parts are supposed to be). No mater, the computer says special order and that’s what it is. More complaining from me and I’m getting the feeling I’m now at a K-Mart store. Finally the salesman says we have 50,000 (or some such number) of items in our catalog and can’t possibly stock them all, we only have a third of what’s in the catalog, so the rest are special orders. So you mean to tell me that there’s a 5 dollar surcharge on two thirds of you catalog and you don’t tell people, plus it takes three weeks to get a simple part, and I have to pay for it up front.

Yep, he replies.

So the web is my new store, we don’t have many local options around here.

-Gary

[Concordia..41]

Ditto Gary's experience, but add a "hazardous materials" shipping surcharge for varnish and thinner :mad:

Anything I need I do my best to order from Sailnet, Jamestown or the like. As far as I'm concerned the only use for our local WM store is when I'm purchasing materials for a client who just has to have something right now and doesn't care about the price. I'll run in to Waste, make the purchase, put the item on the client's invoice and wait for my Rewards check ;)

When ordering on-line - especially on high end items, put the model # and/or sku in Google, then click on the Froogle tab. It'll sort by best price :cool:

Happy Shopping!
- M

[ 08-03-2004, 08:34 PM: Message edited by: Concordia..41 ]

[WindHawk]

On the other hand, I was going to buy a discontinued pair of deck shoes for half-off the $57 price, they (West) didn't have my size except for the display pair. The shoe that was on display was dirty, so they gave me another half-off; I ended up getting a $57 pair of shoes for $14 that looked pretty much the same color after a walk around the parking lot.

Service is so bad everywhere anymore, that I can't single anyone out.

[landlocked sailor]

I only have two experiences with WM. This spring, I went into the Jacksonville NC store to but Binocs & a handheld VHF. I had read reviews in Practical Sailor but did not have the issues with me. The counterman had all the PS back issues in binders. He was very helpful in finding the right models from the articles. The VHF was out of stock, so he ordered it to be sent directly to my home. No shipping charge since they "should have" had it in stock, plus no sales tax since my home is in PA.
5 or 6 years ago my family was browsing in the Anapolis WM. My daughter like the brass key chains at the checkout, but she didn't want to spend $5 of her allowance on one. She filled out a customer survey card and mentioned that she thought the price was too high. Several weeks later she got a package from the store manager. You guessed it, it was a bress key chain along with a handwritten letter and a $5 gift certificate.
It sure doesn't sound like my experiences are typical though...........Rick

[Jonathan Kabak]

Just to present the other side of the coin...

For every horrible experience I have had with West Marine and Port Supply their wholesale division, there are a few stars out there that should be mentioned should you ever be near by.

Drew, Joy and the rest of the gang at the West Marine in Southwest Harbor Maine are fantastic. Pleasent, curtious, cheerful, and most of all knowledgeable.

Likewise the staff at the West Marine in Key West. Although it's been a number of years since dealing with them I always recall excellent customer service at that particular store.

It sounds like the biggest thing that West is missing in consistancy of service.

my two cents

Jonathan

[stevenj]

I'll have to relate good experiences as well at my local store in Richmond.... they even 'match' prices from Hamilton Marine!!!

Guess it depends on who is running the store...

stevenj