A very angry customer of The Boat Yard, Lowveld Marine, Deon de Waal writes:

It all started when the owner of the business, Dough Vermeulen gave me a quotation on repairing my boat. We looked at all the issues that needed repair and a lot was said.

He mentioned that all the cracks and scratches on it would be fixed and repainted (his words were “your boat will look just like your Fortuner”). He only ended up redoing the keel, which he scratched after the repair and blamed it on his workers and my beaching strip is also dented – it seems to have been dropped onto the trailer after they had finished the paint job. The top half of the deck which they never repainted and fixed has more chips and scrapes from falling tools.
The deck’s stone chip was showing signs of aging and there were a couple of chips out. I asked if we could have it repaired and he said, “Yes, we will have to take off the old stone chip and redo it.”

He quoted me R2 000, which sounded reasonable at the time. When I got my boat back, the deck had a fresh coat of paint on and I assumed it had been redone. Only after getting home upon closer inspection, did I notice that I could still see the old chips that I had shown him and that he had in fact only repainted the deck.

Vermeulen took my boat on April 14.

Mid-July, he had only just started sanding the boat’s keel, nothing else had been done. While there I asked him why they were just doing the bottom part of the boat and not the top part.
He said, “No! If we had to do the top part it would cost double what I quoted you!” I asked him if he was going to be finished in time because of the late start. He assured me he would.

He had quoted me R4 000 to repaint it, which I thought was fair, until I realised they were only doing the bottom section. Other concerns on the quotation were things such as they quoted to spray both motors, but the statement only said one.

They quoted to service both motors but only said one on the quote. When I spoke to him about this he said, “No man! Don’t worry I remember everything, of course we will spray and service both motors!” I paid him the balance of R2 600. Luckily there was still time to test the boat the weekend before a competition I wanted to attend.

As I got in the water, I couldn’t get my brand-new serviced motors started. I noticed that there were two pins missing on the motors. I phoned Vermeulen to explain that they were missing.

“No, I never touched those pins!” he said. So I asked him how they repainted the motors if they didn’t remove the pins. “Oh, those pins.” He would look for them and send them via courier.

Lowveld Marine replies:
The customer seems to be off track. We have a book whereby we write things the customers request to have quoted. He stated he needed his boat by the end of September. We sent a quotation via email. We have been going for 15 years and although a small concern, we try to keep to the original quote, but if the customers does request other work, he must understand it is at his expense.