Escape from the shop and ready for launch

When we bought Thanks Sweetie we had a mechanical inspection that showed a laundry list of things in need of repair.  Most of them were wear-and-tear/periodic maintenance items that would need to be done sooner or later -- annodes, burned out light bulbs, worn bottom paint, impeller service, etc.

This all came to us thanks to a $995 maintenance inspection we paid for, which was given to us as a repair estimate by the dealership's shop who was providing brokerage.  We got a 10% price break when the seller accepted our initial offer and because most of the items were kind of wear and tear, periodic maintenance we didn't use it as a basis to try to negotiate more money off.  I assumed up front that something would need to get fixed and that it wouldn't be in like-new condition completely.

So we ran through what needed to be done and what we thought could be put off or done ourselves.  It's always a complex internal negotiation -- paying someone else to do it is easy, but it's also easy to bite off more than you can chew or not have the boat ready to run when we dunk it.  I spent 20 minutes on the phone with the shop accepting and rejecting the itemized estimate schedule and off it went.

Last week I got a call from the shop -- your boat's done, and since you won't launch for a month or so (actually 36 days from this writing, as if anyone's counting..) we'd like you to pay now.  I told them to email me the itemized invoice and I would call back with authorization.

Wow!  It was way more than I mentally expected.  In my mind, it was a little over $4000 but came to over $7000.  What the heck...  So I sat down and built a spreadsheet with columns for the estimates and the actuals for all requested repairs and the over/under of parts and labor for each itemized repair.  The tale of the tape was that parts were nearly $1000 over the original estimate, with three repair orders having parts overages of $250-$375.

I called the service contact back and complained about the gaps.  One overage was the result of data entry error on the invoice (charged for more parts than they used), two parts were completely mispriced on the estimate, and another was a "hidden" part not visible until disassembly.

After some back and forth about liability for erroneous estimates and concern that the estimate was deliberately misleading to enable the sale through their brokerage, the shop adjusted the invoice down by about $700, although in a byzantine way but cutting out labor charges for the most part -- ironically, the one item they came in UNDER the original estimate on.

I mostly felt like this was a victory, if a pyhric one.  Had they followed good shop procedure and just called me about the deviations, they might have gotten away with charging me more and in some ways I think I walked away with a better deal than had the estimate just been accurate.

I'm still somewhat perturbed by the process, though.  Having the brokerage and shop under one business umbrella is a huge moral hazard for them and allows them a lot of information asymmetry that can be used against me, and I kind of wonder what they didn't tell me to unload the boat and whether the inspection was all that comprehensive.  I'm not going to use this shop for any further maintenance -- they're 30-odd miles from my marina, and I have options closer with a shop the marina has a relationship with.

But I'm not on a campaign to bash the shop, either.  They did give back to me pretty easily (even if they had to) and it's not impossible a lot of it was just honest mistakes.

But regardless, we launch in 36 days and I can't wait.  It's going to be pretty early in terms of seasonality.  The lake is nearly ice free now, but it will still be dubious weather for active boating.  The good news is I will be able to get after the small-scale stuff like lightbulbs and the new boat name vinyl without bumping into actual boating season.