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In your Personal Opinion.....!? Brokers!?


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Edit by Magpie Patrick: text reinstated following discussion between mods 

 

In my personal opinion of looking for boats attitude & service I got at Great Hayward was surpringly strange, everyone else says customer is king, they, in my personal experience, seemed confused about customers.....I will stress that I am only one (if not the only one) dissatisfied customer amongst thousands....so this is purely a personal experience review.

Now I know they have had many Thousands of happy customers with no issues, in my personal experience of their customer care & services I always felt like I should be happy to be with them......amongst others, many of which have been negatively reviewed from a personal point of view, I still felt I got a better initial care than most.

Terms of trade seem strangely different, as GH have a 5% value clause on their deposit regardless of the issues yet other state, more reasonably, that any 'Essential Repairs' are grounds for refund if a negotiated position cannot be achieved.

It does pay HUGELY to travel around the different brokers as the response you get is vastly different, my excitement and enthusiasm for a boat got in the way of my gut feel, and sales speak must match their terms, unlike my personal experience.

I have been informed that the boat has been repaired in a non-standard fashion!? I can only assume that it is in hope that the boat will sell quickly without real survey or issue - why non-standard repairs become acceptable for a seller despite professing to care for both seller and buyer I don't know....however....

....I am only one failure amongst thousands so I must now look forward.....with excitement to my new purchase from a broker who cared for their customer and buyer without issue and put everything in writing.....don't accept the 'I think phone calls work better!' When you want real answers! Get it in writing only folks!!

in your personal experience, do you have good and bad moment with brokers...?....what was the one (or more) questions you wished you had asked or requests made?

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I bought my present boat when it was on brokerage with Gt Hayward brokerage. I bought it because I could see it was a good boat and I dictated basicaly a good price. I bought it despite being for brokerage with them who make cowboys look good had I not understood boats I would have run a mile with their attitude !! Completely useless. A friend of mine sold a boat through them and had nothing but hassle.

  • Greenie 1
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Just now, Captain Pegg said:

I had one bad experience with a broker and the key point was that the customer of the broker is not the buyer; it is the seller.

JP

The same in my personal experierience....Hayward kept telling me both were looked after...in my own personal opinion it was not me, and in my personal experience felt neither benefitted ....both lost....but I will not lose without passing on my experiences.

...but hey they have made thousands of happy people and £s so who am I to argue, but a humble country boy :rolleyes:

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13 minutes ago, Captain Pegg said:

I had one bad experience with a broker and the key point was that the customer of the broker is not the buyer; it is the seller.

JP

We have only had the one experience of marine brokers and it was a good one. But then again we were buying one of their own boats.

They were very helpful from start to finish of the process and the purchase went smoothly. 

We would use them again to both buy and sell.

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1 minute ago, Naughty Cal said:

We have only had the one experience of marine brokers and it was a good one. But then again we were buying one of their own boats.

They were very helpful from start to finish of the process and the purchase went smoothly. 

We would use them again to both buy and sell.

Go on Name and Shame!! :D:D

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Great Hayward have a very dodgy reputation on here. Possibly even worse than Wilton. 

The big difference is Great Hayward are very protective of their 'reputation' and have a track record of pressuring the site management here into taking down threads that contain negative comments about them, so their poor reputation doesn't get propagated like Wilton's.

Stand by for this thread to be deleted.

The thing is, there is nothing wrong with dealing with the sharks if they have the boat you want, provided you know what you are dealing with and don't trust them an inch. Ethical and trustworthy brokers e.g. ABNB are a joy to deal with in contrast, however.

 

 

  • Greenie 1
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I purchased my boat from Sawley Marina, great customer service, the sale went through smoothly from initial viewing, survey through to collection.

Don't recall hearing any bad comments about them on here either.

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Sold through Rugby boats before, very happy as a seller.

I've viewed boats at Great Haywood as a potential buyer and didn't enjoy the experience. I had staff telling me i didn't know what i wanted and that they did etc.

I also found that the majority of the boats they had advertised had already sold long ago, but they didn't show as 'sold' anywhere on their website or AD, i believe thus trying to create the image they had lots of boats for sale which actually they didn't. That makes them untrustworthy IN MY OPINION.

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I bought from Wilton, who have a bad reputation, mind you this was ten years ago and more. No problem. The boat was bought from a finance company, I knew what I was doing and what I was looking for. They were polite, well organised and (importantly) left me to look at the boats without a hard sell

Sold through Saul Junction, the one and only summer they had Butch doing the selling, he sold the boat with days for the asking price. I was happy they had a good deal as they were novices, I hope they thought so too. 

I'm not going to say a word about the reputation of either, although both scored well in my opinion. The key was matching buyer and seller, I knew what I was doing as a buyer so the seller being faceless didn't matter, as a seller I had a conscience, I wasn't faceless.  

Put a novice buyer with a faceless seller and a lacklustre broker and I can see there might be issues.

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ABC boat sale at Gayton for me, couldn't have asked for a smoother purchase, kept me up to date, organised the work that needed doing before the sale went through at the sellers cost, let us take the boat out before the sale concluded, even the yard man who checked the toilet tanks and filled up gas and diesel shown me how to reverse.

 

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When i was looking for a boat I talked to an awful lot of people, many with an awful lot of experience of living on the waterways who knew shedloads about boats. Brokers, continuous cruisers, marina owners, surveyors,  e bay sellers, one who had never not lived on a boat who answered the question "what are the questions I should be asking?" with astonishing succinctness and clarity. I eventually bought through a broker who seemed to know jack. In my opinion they would have been happy selling anything, motorhomes, package holidays or trips on a hot air balloon. They didn't know how to start the engine (it is rather old) wouldn't let me speak to the vendor (maybe the vendor wanted it that way), didnt let me see previous surveys (maybe they didn't know they were in existence) I remember a dangly brass lamp being pointed out as "worth at least a hundred quid" (yea that's great now tell me about the hull). They did do a very efficient job of organising the dry dock and handling the transfer of ownership and added an air of legitimacy to the sale.  After all handing over tens of thousands to a bloke whose address is a couple o hundred yards down from lock 24 towpath side but I'm moving on Wednesday is a bit of a bottle job. Ultimately a broker had the boat I wanted but i did a lot of checking up myself and wasn't overawed by their expertise, and was prepared to walk away from my deposit if things got smelly coz I didn't think that they'd be much help.

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2 hours ago, junior said:

Sold through Rugby boats before, very happy as a seller.

I've viewed boats at Great Haywood as a potential buyer and didn't enjoy the experience. I had staff telling me i didn't know what i wanted and that they did etc.

I also found that the majority of the boats they had advertised had already sold long ago, but they didn't show as 'sold' anywhere on their website or AD, i believe thus trying to create the image they had lots of boats for sale which actually they didn't. That makes them untrustworthy IN MY OPINION.

I purchased my boat through Rugby boats and I am content with how I was treated during the experience.

However there was no doubt at any time that Dominic was working on the seller's behalf. He was not and did not pretend to be, an impartial 'middle man' in the sale. Frankly I had expected this and found it refreshing that there was no attempt at pretence to the contrary.

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Just now, frahkn said:

I purchased my boat through Rugby boats and I am content with how I was treated during the experience.

However there was no doubt at any time that Dominic was working on the seller's behalf. He was not and did not pretend to be, an impartial 'middle man' in the sale. Frankly I had expected this and found it refreshing that there was no attempt at pretence to the contrary.

Yes Dominic sold two boats for me and was first class both times. Company is now owned by James who it seems is keeping up the good work.

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Well there are only two boats currently for sale at the moment that would tempt me back onto the canals and one of them is at Great Haywood.

Sadly I can't afford it at the moment so won't be in a position to comment on their performance.

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New and used boat company for both a sale and a purchase, they offered me a good price for my old boat, and as the new one was on brokerage with them, I put in a seriously low offer and bought at a great price.

Service was good and I still pop in and see Ian when we are down that direction, so we must be happy with the service.

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