Understandably customer is upset, HOWEVER this is no fault of Suncoast Marine Management, the ocean freight line, at it's discretion may charge what is called a "fuel" surcharge. This customer was charged a 48% fuel surcharge by Wallinus Willimhasen. I am not a billion dollar company with freighters, this occured at the time fuel was skyrocketing. No shipping is guaranteed when ocean freight. I went above and beyond, delivered the boat to port of exit, and even changed ownership of the vessel prior to it ever leaving the USA. All of these things would not have been done if there was fraud going on, I again cannot control ocean freight. We have hundreds of customers with no complaints, unfortunately as anyone reading here can assume, ocean freight for a vessel that is anywhere from 36-39 feet from Baltimore, MD to Auckland, NZ is going to be a huge charge, when the shipping line adds a fuel surcharge, that they (the shipping line) prints on their OWN paperwork, how is Suncoast Marine Management responsible for that. We are a family owned and operated business, and even pleaded with Wallinus to remove the fuel surcharge, but they would not, word is that they were doing it on all the vessels being shipped as due the size of the freighters and the rising fuel they were operating in the negative. As far as this complaint, these are isolated instances, unfortunately this is not a perfect world and you cannot make everyone happy, there will be times when things will not work out, but I assure all who read this, there was no fraud, customer has his boat, customer had ownership prior to ever leaving, we fixed boat for him while being Captained (boat broke down on the way to port) and we could have easily and RIGHTLY took the boat to a marina and washed our hands of it, we had our Captain and employee spend several days down in the hull of the boat fixing it, and saving the buyer money instead of hiring a CAT mechanic who would have charged the buyer many additional thousands of dollars. I am not coming up with extra money to keep someone "happy", I am confident of my position and our actions, and have overzealous customers who wish to reap havoc on an honest transactions. Feel free to come view the paperwork, at my office, or contact me and I will provide you with my attorney's information, which I have just had to retain as this customer has continued his defamation of my business and slander, and thus will be sued accordingly; I do not think a company that was guilty of what is accused would take an offensvie approach as we have, but we have had enough AND WILL NOT CONTINUE TO BE BULLIED.
