Is this American Justice?
We joined Waves Boat Club 18 months ago, paying a total of $6,276 for 4 years prepaid boating. We have been suspended for the past 4 months and have just had a court hearing rule against us and ordered to pay $2,500 for a blown power head, Waves say was caused by us.
The truth, the whole truth and nothing but................
In November last year, myself, my husband and an American friend took out R U Ready. We had been out for over 4 hours ambling around Sarasota Bay, stopping for lunch, and fishing off the back of the boat, before deciding to return. On our return we throttled up for the very first time about half a mile from the dock. Then when throttling down the engine suddenly died with No Prior Warning. Our friend who is a seasoned boater, checked a few things and tried to start the engine a couple of times without success, so we called in. Waves staff, Bob & Joe came out, tried exactly the same things as Bernie, our friend, to no avail, so towed us in.
We had previously had a few words with Bob as he was trying to charge us for a damaged water pump on a boat which we had not even previously taken out. We were also actually told by another Waves staff, that he had washed the pump out and it was alright.
On our return there was quite a heated confrontation about the pump and we then left the boatyard. We paid the $14 fuel bill - which we were later accused of not paying, and gave Joe a $5 dollar tip. We thought no more of this and 10 days later, returned to England (we are semi-retired and live in Venice part-time)
Much to our surprise, when our friend opened our florida mail a couple or so weeks later, we had a bill from Carissa Ellis saying we had trashed her motor and that we were liable for $2,500 of the $7,000 dollars it took to repair the engine. She says that as the boat was fine when we took it out, any damage was down to us.
Incidentally the engine had over 2,100 hours on the clock and was repaired as opposed to replaced!
We believe the boat was not p
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