Sept 29,30

After six long and agonizing weeks, they finally fixed Serendipity. Our beautiful Campion Biltmore was another victim of Covid. Evinrude stopped making motors in April, ostensibly because of Covid19, perhaps because of other issues as well. When the world stopped due to the virus, BRP the parent company of Evinrude elected to shut things down and send everyone home. This didn’t help their customers and it left everyone scrambling, parts were an issue, and getting them took forever.

Getting answers took just as long. The dealer that took on the contract for the motor was unaware if they would cover under warranty and didn’t seem too interested in pushing BRP to get answers. I say didn’t seem to because that is how it felt. Luxury Lake Tours is a small company with only one boat. So when that single boat went down I would hope the dealership would do everything in its power to help a small company like us get back on our feet.

I asked, I begged for a loaner boat, for help getting things up and running. Instead, I waited. I got a call from the manager and he finally made an executive decision and ordered us the part we needed to get our boat back on the water. I shouldn’t hold them at fault, yet it feels like they didn’t try hard enough to service us as a customer.

Maybe it is because they were too busy; maybe they sold too many boats this summer. Maybe Covid really did mess things up for them like for everyone else. Too bad the bedside manner of the service guys was lacking. My main service manager was good but his compatriots were not all that helpful. I tried to make them understand the fact we needed our boat because it was our livelihood, they didn’t seem to care.

I don’t want to seem like I am whining, but I am frustrated with a few things that happened at the end. I was patient, I understood. It took a long time to get things shipped, apparently, in the coronaverse there is a built-in excuse for shipping times to be extremely long and painful. The thing I don’t understand is why? Why is shipping things so much longer? What happened to create a long delay in getting items shipped? It is not just boat parts but everything is taking a very long time to be transported these days.

In the end, we have our boat back on the water and in time I will let my frustrations go. In the now I don’t understand why they couldn’t give us a clean boat. They had it for six weeks. It was filthy, covered in black marks and dust. They assured me they would clean it and they told me it would be ready by a certain time. I get how things work in the world of mechanics. Sometimes things take longer. What I want to know is at the end of September how come our boat was not made a priority when most other boats are being put away for winter. The main thing would be to have someone talk to me and explain things, not give me an attitude and treat me like I am in the wrong.

I wish I was writing a glowing review, I wish I could say they treated me great. Wishing doesn’t get my boat back any sooner and it doesn’t change the feeling of distaste in my mouth. Was it BRP, or was it a combination of everything? I will just be glad the boat is back and on the water. I hope we can keep it running for another few years and have no issues.  I don’t want to have to rely on Martin Motorsports or BRP again.