Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

Please read through the thread to at least the 2nd page, everything was resolved.

So a couple years ago I acquired and older PlayCraft trading a rather large cabin cruiser for it. Furniture was/is in fair shape for the age but could use some refreshing. Coming up on Memorial weekend and the wife is excited about being back home this year so she can go back to the lake with her friends and her new pontoon (We were relocated all last year but that's a whole other story).

So I get back on this forum looking at all the amazing rebuilds going on. I go to Pontoonstuff.com because they offer a discount to forum members and from what I see and read on here they are the best. I put together and entire package of furniture, flooring, cover, ladder, lights, LED under furniture lights etc. The total is about $3k but a lot of the furniture we wanted was on back order. The carpet on our boat did not survive another winter and needed done ASAP. So I just ordered the carpet kit from PS figuring on doing that the weekend before Memorial day, using the old furniture to get through the holiday then scheduling a week off once the furniture came back in stock at PS and finishing it for the wife so she could use her boat this summer.

Well the hardware came, the carpet came, I paid for a flight home to redo it the weekend before Memorial day, had my kids remove everything they could and no glue. I e-mail PS to make sure I read the description of the kit I ordered correctly and that it was supposed to include glue. It was but there was a problem with the manufacturer and it would be shipped later. Would have been nice to find that out sooner. So I cancelled my flight. I got a call from PS early in the week telling me that the glue was shipping the next morning and I would have it by Friday or Saturday. I booked another flight, arrived home Friday morning, helped the wife get the 5th wheel to the lake and went back home to await the arrival of said glue. Had a buddy there waiting with me so we could knock out the carpeting job and return the boat to my wife at the lake. Waited the rest of the day Friday, all day Saturday and finally when there was no chance of it being delivered Saturday night I called the wife and told her there would be no boating. I flew out Monday (Memorial Day) and still no glue, no tracking information from PS, nothing.

I have faith that PS is a great supplier, I read nothing but positive words about them so maybe it's just me and my bad luck. However at this point I have wasted 3 days of vacation time as well as a cancelation fee on one airline ticket and another round trip airline ticket but my wife still has no pontoon boat.

While I feel for you not being able to enjoy a holiday weekend.... BUT you never take a piece of functional equipment out of service until to KNOW that you have all the parts needed to make a repair. Also putting yourself under the timing gun of making said repairs is always a recipe for disasiter.... Should have just thrown down some old throw rugs if the carpet was in that bad of shape and enjoyed the weekend....

Kinda like blaming the victim for the crime. the quickest way for a company to get a bad reputation is not communicating. most people will be understanding if you let them know about the problem ahead. nothing worse than to have to chase stuff down.

teecro wrote:While I feel for you not being able to enjoy a holiday weekend.... BUT you never take a piece of functional equipment out of service until to KNOW that you have all the parts needed to make a repair. Also putting yourself under the timing gun of making said repairs is always a recipe for disasiter.... Should have just thrown down some old throw rugs if the carpet was in that bad of shape and enjoyed the weekend....

I realize I backed myself into a corner but once I got tracking information from PS I figured all was good and had the daughter, son-in-law and son prep the boat for re-carpeting. Only after the first package arrived did I find out there was no glue. The carpet arrived two days later and still no glue. I only found out about the glue snafu from PS after I contacted them.

ron nh wrote:Kinda like blaming the victim for the crime. the quickest way for a company to get a bad reputation is not communicating. most people will be understanding if you let them know about the problem ahead. nothing worse than to have to chase stuff down.

Yes a quick note with the confirmation or even a day later and I would have said no problem, these things happen. What bothered me and still bothers me is after everything arrived I had to contact them but worse yet, they knew about it however I had to make the first move.

Sorry to hear about your troubles. I had some issues with an order from PS but with some two way communication the customer service Dept. did everything they could to make it right. I hope it gets better for you. One thing I learned during my rebuild was no one but me was in a hurry!

And since I was on the subject and sitting here in my motel room I called and asked the wife, the glue still has not shown up, now almost a week later than when I was told it was going to arrive. Not a peep from PS since 10:25am on the 20th when they called telling me it was shipping and I would have it no later that the 23rd.

Catalina,

I forwarded your concern to Jim the owner. Stay tooned....

curtiscapk wrote:Catalina,

I forwarded your concern to Jim the owner. Stay tooned....

I sent another e-mail to customer service last night, they replied this morning

Pontoonstuff.com wrote: I apologize for the inconvenience. I understand you're upset and I don't blame you I would be too. When we told you it shipped its because in our system it said we did. I spoke with my director and he said that it was never allocated that's why you haven't received it. That being said, its our mistake and we apologize, for the inconvenience my director refunded you the cost of your glue. He make a new order and reshipped it. Will ship out today for sure. We appreciate your patience with us.

Thank you

With that they have already refunded the cost of the glue and I have received shipping notification and tracking info.

Hi catalinaflyer

I am so sorry for the mistakes and delays. To be honest we are so overwhelmed that we are screwing up left and right and cannot seem to get our heads above water yet but I am taking major steps to improve the situation so this doesn't happen again. I'd like to refund you your airline tickets and vacation days that we've made you waste. Also, I want to make sure your order gets completed ASAP. If you'll email me your order number please along with the costs we've made you incur I would be more than happy to take care of you. Please email me at jmyers1165@gmail.com

I had planned for some decent growth this year, 20% increase in inventory, added new folks to our call center and then our sales doubled each month compared to even my wildest expectations or previous years history and we blew through all the inventory of seats we had much sooner than expected and production couldn't keep up with demand. We began pushing the back order dates to realistic time frames but I underestimated how much sales would continue to grow so we had a period of several weeks where we were selling product and ended up needing to push back the delivery date to a lot customers. That's just something that is completely unacceptable and we've been trying to compensate with refunds, etc to try and take away the sting of it all. We are starting a 20,000 sq ft addition that will be completed by Nov. and an addition 60,000 will go up in the spring, this will allow us to house what we need for peak season and I've added several new call center employees but we are limited in how many people we can add and train while still trying to function. All in all I blew this year for our customers and I apologize for the time we've wasted for you. I'll be sending an apologize letter to everyone who has purchased this year explaining the situation, I managed the growth very poorly and I'll be sure to overcompensate across the board from now on!

The things that have made me successful in business have always been my ability to stock what we sell, ship it immediately, answer all the calls and take care of customers at any cost. Sine April 1st we haven't been able to do any of them to the standard we are accustomed. We went from handling 300-400 calls per day to 1200 on Mondays and Tuesdays and well over 500 every other day... I've got folks working till 11pm answering emails (they're happy for the overtime lol) but we are still a few weeks away from being able to get proper inventory levels again so we can have everything in stock.

Thank you again for your business and I cannot express enough how sorry I am. As boaters we only have a few great months a year and any delay really creates problems. My business allows me to feed my family and my employees and this situation has put what I love so much at risk and I'll make sure it doesn't happen again!

Sincerely

James Myers
President
PontoonStuff.com
DeckMate Boat Seats

Wow. Nice Jim! That is crazy growth!

That is crazy growth. anybody who has been " lucky" enough to experience that kind of growth knows it is also terrifying. things go wrong in a hurry. excellent move by you to over-respond to the problem. no one will forget that. good luck working out the bugs.

James,
I can't begin to tell you how much I appreciate the added attention. I would never think of asking you or accepting reimbursement for my travel. I got to go home a few days, yes there was the snafu with the first ticket but I make mistakes on a regular basis. In fact I'm not overly happy about being refunded the cost of the glue and still being sent the glue, you didn't make $60 on that total sale so now you've lost money selling to me.

I was upset over the lack of communication when I found out your people knew about the short shipment yet I had to make the first move to find out. With that being said I understand growing pains, my company has doubled in size in just over a year and some pains are inevitable.

I had a long talk with the wife this morning, we agree we were both a bit quick on the trigger and let the stress of a failed lake trip guide us rather than waiting to see what had actually happened.

I will be ordering all new furniture from you soon and I'll forget to enter the 10% code on part of it to give you back the money you refunded on the glue.

Some apologies from myself for jumping the gun with your company are due as well.

Wow talk about an owner taking ownership of a problem! We all make mistakes but those willing to own up to it and make it right seem to be harder to find these days.

I had a couple orders with PS. One order I received a seat with a small tear. Emailed them over thew weekend with pictures. They Called me promptly Monday am. A couple questions and a new seat was shipped same day and they said just keep the damaged one! Great company!

Impressive---
Both from PS.com and the OP--
Both of you guys are top shelf!

Several weeks ago, someone here posted a link to PS for a great deal they had on 303 cleaner and protectant. I had never had need to order from PS before but ordered 2 each of the 303 packs because I needed some and the price was right, especially with our discount. I received the order in 3 days....great service.
After reading this thread and the good experience that I had, I will, most definitely, be a repeat customer for all my pontoon needs.