I want to warn anyone who plans on doing business or is doing business with either of these companies.
Back in March I found out my prop shaft was bent on my Yahama 225 hp outboard. After doing some research I decided to purchase a rebuilt lower unit and started searching for one. I came across marineparts.com and they advertised they had the unit I need for a price that I could afford plus a 15 month warrantee which was the icing on the cake. I called them and asked lots of questions about the warrantee and so on and figured I would take the plunge and placed an order.
A company called Soutwest Marine Inc. out of Fort Myers handles the rebuilds on their behalf and promptly sent me a box to ship my old disassembled lower unit to them. About a week later a rebuilt lower unit showed up at my door and I took it over to the marina where my boat was located and their mechanic bolted it on and I figured I was on my way. Fork lift dropped my boat in the water and I fired up the engine and imagine my surprise when I put her into forward gear and the boat went backwards and almost slammed into the sea wall
Long story short hauled the boat back out and called Southwest Marine immediatly. They apologized profusely and said a mistake must have been made when they put the unit together and they would take care of it immediately. I told them that I was now going to incure an additional haul out fee from the marina plus labor to install the next lower unit. They said no problem they would cover the charges and to simply fax them the bill from the marina/mechanic and acheck would be sent to me promptly to cover the charges
So the unit was shipped back and four days later another unit shows up. I was really impressed with how fast they turned it around and grateful that they were standing behind their mistake. Unit was promptly installed and the boat was dropped in the water. This time I put the boat in forward and no problems, boat went forward I figured that sometimes mistakes happen but they made the situation right so no need to be upset.
Well all the good feelings torwards Southwest Marine and Marinepart.com started to evaporate soon after that. I promptly faxed in the bill to Southwest for the additional haul out and one hour of labor the marina charged me. And then waited and waited and waited, no check showed up. Then all of sudden a letter arrives and in it is a invoice telling me I have store credit with SouthWest Marine and can redeem it at any time. Now I am pissed I immediatly called them and told them this was not what was agreed upon and I was told I would get cash back for the haul out and mech labor. The gentlemen I talked to said that the owner stated times are tough and that is just how it is. Now lets be clear we are not talking 10s of thousands of dollars here. We are talking about less then 200 bucks but it's 200 bucks I worked really hard for and had to pay out for their screw up.
So now it's the month of October and I've given up on ever seeing my money. I can't tell you how many times I've called SouthWest Marine and Marineparts.com over the past months about this situation and all I get is the run around.
Both of these companies have lost me as a customer and I am now going to spread the word far and wide about how they lied and screwed me out of my hard earned money.
The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.
Worst customer service ever. I had ordered a new muffler for Gen Set from them 3 weeks ago. Last week called and they said they made mistake and it would be here in two days..9 days later called to find it has not yet been shipped, asked if they could send it two day and they refused. Mind you each conversation I requested an e mail with tracking and sales information and each time I was on hold a min of 5 mins while they looked up my order...as you can imagine, none of the above tracking e mails happened and no one followed up.
When I asked for a refund the sales man yelled at me in broken English, and said he will cancel my order. They deserve less then 1/2 star.
Only thing that made it better is, I found Marine Parts Source online...not only did they have the part in stock, they sent shipping confirmation, with tracking the same day as the order. Note, I was able to order the exact part online and no hassle...even better yet...It was $76.00 less and free shipping. www.marinepartssource.com
I will chime in here and say that I wish I had found this review before I placed 2 orders with them last week that were both screwed up and only resolved by me having to file a dispute with my credit card company. The website for marineparts.com now states "We are currently updating our data base, some prices and stock may have changed please call, email or contact us on our live chat for price and availability confirmation." So, I decided to call the 800 number and inquire about a one foot chunk of exhaust hose I needed. I was told the price of the hose was $20/ft., but that their minimum order was $25. I told them to send me 2 one foot pieces then, and figured I would have a spare which wouldn't be a bad thing.
The next day I also realized that I was going to need some gaskets for the exhaust manifold as well, so I called and gave them the part number off the old gasket. I had seen a picture of the gasket with that part number on line and it was the one I needed and seemed to come in packs of 4. They told me that as well and described the gasket to me so I was sure that it was the correct one, so I went ahead and placed a second order for that.
Later on when they emailed me the invoice and shipping confirmation for the first order I was surprised to see that they charged me $35 and change for each of the chunks of hose. I replied to the email right away but got no response. When the second order arrived later in the week I was further surprised to see that the gasket I ordered was not only not the correct gasket that was described to me, but was just a single unit, not a four pack. This time I called in to report the problem. I got the same guy on the phone who I had placed the orders with (I actually think this is just a one-man operation operating out of a home or apartment), who told me that he remembered my order and would look in to what had gone wrong and call me back. I never received any call or email back and had to file a dispute with my credit card company yesterday to get my money back. I would not recommend doing any business with this company. There are plenty of reputable companies out there. This is not one of them.