Correct Craft Customer Service (or lack thereof)

[Rick-S.]

After years of wishing for a Nautique, my wife bought me a new 1997 SS for my 40th birthday from the only Nautique dealer in NE Ohio (and only 45 minutes away). Several years later, the dealership dropped or was dropped by (depending on what side of the story you want to believe) Correct Craft. Correct Craft replaced the dealer in NE Ohio with a new dealer in north central Ohio. For any "authorized" Correct Craft service, I must now tow our boat 1 and 1/2 hours from home or 2 hours from the lake we use.
I have expressed my concern about the lack of a closer dealership to Gary Meloon at Correct Craft via email. I also spoke personally to Ken Meloon at the '03 Cleveland Boat Show. In my opinion, their response was nothing less than a brush-off in the form of sales retoric. As a customer, my concern has fallen on deaf corporate ears. This merely reinforces what I have found to being occur more and more over the last several years............... "customer service" is a thing of the past.

[Hollywood]

customer service

I don't see how customer service and dealer location have anything to do with each other. You should consider yourself lucky for only having to travel a maximum of 2 hours to an authorized CC dealer/maintenance facility. If I were a Meloon, I'd be brushing you off too.

[H2Oskier]

Not to be a hard *** or anything but what does that have to do with customer service?? Do you actually think that Corrct Craft is going to open a dealership in your back yard for you! I think not! Get over it or buy a boat that has a local dealer when you sell this one.

Consider yourself lucky as I have a 2.5 hour drive to the dealer that is close to me but that is life. I have only taken my boat there 2 times in 2 years so I guess it is not that big of a deal. The closest inboard dealer to me is 1.5 hours away, that is Malibu(and that ain't happenin!!)

Sorry for sounding pissy but when you read some of the post that complain about maintenance and all that,it is no different than the car you drive everyday. I do not care what you are having worked on or where at, it is expensive the warranties suck and they never get it done when you want it. Face it, all in all Correct Craft has the best warranty available right now and if YOU owned a dealership that had to back it up and all the calls you answered were from people that wanted to bring there boat it today and have it back tommorrow because they are going skiing the next day your people skills would fail sometimes too. Not to mention that the world does not revolve around YOU, there are others that have the same problems therefore it is first come first serve!! I have to say that my experience with Correct Craft has been awesome!!!

By the way, I like this website but the constant bitching on a couple of threads just shows that some people are going to be that way if you rolled out the red carpet for them! Lets keep it positive here fellas!

[skinautique]

H20skier,
Good points.

Rick,

Yes the drive is a pain in the a__ but sometimes you can schedule a same day service with the dealership too. It might be a little bit of a further drive for you but Silver Spray Sports in Fenton, MI has an awesome service department. Their head mechanic has been there for over 12 years and does an awesome job. It might be worth it to check them out if you aren't happy with going to your other dealership.
Also, most of these dealers are only moving 30-60 boats a year. Some maybe more and some less. Therefore, if there are 6 dealers in the area, they would be lucky to each move ten of them in a year. Not too cool.

[ripfish]

This is basic distribution problem with a product of this kind. Your state cannot support more than a couple distributors if that. To uphold dealers to a level of service expected by correct craft, they cannot open up so many dealers that none of them make enough $$ to support themselves, sales, and service personel. Besides you sound spoiled if an hour and half is a big deal to you. Buy a Mastercraft! Then you need to live close since you will be going in for service more often. :cry: Sorry to sound so salty, thats just how it works. Not Mr. Meloons fault, he is just doing his dealers a favor by not opening up more than the region can support.