Nautique Quality questioned by dealer

[lztat573]

you're getting bargain. BKH

Not with the stupid and lazy mistakes they are making. At least the ones I have found on my boat.
I may be a little frustrated with some of the things, but I would still go out and buy another Nautique, so please don't take me wrong.

[bkhallpass]

you're getting bargain. BKH

Not with the stupid and lazy mistakes they are making. At least the ones I have found on my boat.
I may be a little frustrated with some of the things, but I would still go out and buy another Nautique, so please don't take me wrong.

It's all good lztat. Correct Craft has built a reputation as having the best quality in their industry. I think you have a right to expect them to deliver on that reputation. If not, I'd fully expect you to vote with your dollars and buy another brand. I just feel that folks go astray when they try to make apples to oranges comparisons with products from other industries. Good boating to you. BKH

[nautique95]

I agree with Jeff, the guy that wrote that letter is full of it, it shows in the fact that he is flat out lying in it on how the relationship with CC ended, I know that it is a minor issue but it speaks volumes that the guy is a lier!
To me "quality" is that I know in 10 years I will have a boat that is still holding up like new and I get top resale out of it, this has been proving to me on the last 4 that I have sold. I think of quality as the types of materials that are used in manufacturing, how the boat is constructed structurally and how it is going to hold up in the long run.

[MikeC]

I wish I could send a letter and get this much free publicity. NPW has stirred a lot of controversy and gotten a considerable amount of publicity at the same time. Couldn't have been planned better. I wish somebody from NPW or Correct Craft would identify themselves as such and post a reply. But in the end it really won't matter, NPW will sell other boats and Correct Craft will have another dealer and maybe the upholstery guy will look at the "N" before he sews the seat together.

As for comparing boats to cars, there is a correlation, it's not exactly apples to apples - more like apples to pears: Bayliner = Hyundai, mass marketed with an emphasis on cost, not performance or quality. Cobalt = Mercedes, engineered for comfort and style, priced high for the style conscience buyer (BTW does anybody know why Mercedes has free roadside assistance? - Because they need it, you pay for the engineering and the style but they still break.) Correct Craft = high performance limited production cars (e.g. Ferrari, Aston Martin etc.), they are limited production vehicles designed and built for a specific purpose with emphasis on the design. They are also hand built and individually tuned and fitted. So is my hand built, highly engineered sport boat worth every penny - absolutely.

I personally have a solid black hull on my Nautique (remember black shows every imperfection) and I can look down the hull and not find a single wave or distortion. The interior is also perfect even after four years of abuse. Do things come loose occasionally? They sure do, a solid joint with limited flex is hard to build that won't come loose at some point, especially after beating it up on the lake day after day. And unless you put loctite on every single nut, they will eventually come loose if you beat them enough (have you ever ridden in an old Ferrari? Rattles like ****, but will still pin your ears back).

[dabigkahuna]

I think you have a right to expect them to deliver on that reputation. If not, I'd fully expect you to vote with your dollars and buy another brand. I just feel that folks go astray when they try to make apples to oranges comparisons with products from other industries.BKH

I agree we are getting off subject here, we need to stay focused on the boat industry and not muddy the water trying to compare Nautiques to Chevys.

Correct Craft has indeed built a reputation as being the best in quality, but that’s the past. The big question here is are they still the best? I think more and more people are starting to think that Correct Craft is slipping, and that their quality is not what it used to be. CC pricing in recent years has outpaced than rate of inflation, so you would think that there would be some room for making improvements on the quality front (they should be making higher profits as their increase in direct costs is lower than the increase in revenue). Instead, in my opinion, they have been going backwards on the quality front. I know a lot of old school Nautique owners that scratch their head when they get into a new Nautique.

It will be interesting to see how this industry shakes out. The pricing of boats now days has gotten insane. This sport is already expensive enough, and with the astronomically high costs of purchasing a boat, I just don’t see the sport growing as much as some people think it will. Maybe well see a major shift in the pendulum where small start-up companies like Epic and Wakecraft start gaining serious market share…who knows?

One thing is for sure, I’m not paying $95,000.00 for a ski boat. :???:

[AbunDiga909]

I've stayed out of this one (until now obviously) b/c I feel I could write a reference book on CC and dealer quality.. but this i think i want to say...

Correct Craft = high performance limited production cars (e.g. Ferrari, Aston Martin etc.), they are limited production vehicles designed and built for a specific purpose with emphasis on the design.

...I'd like to see them hire someone from one of those companies... CC should not be able to get away with being compared to Mercedes, BMW, Porche, etc... (which I agree with) and hire people from Sea Ray, daimler chrysler, GM, or any other american detroit company (which i dont agree with). granted, i'm going to get a lot of heat for this, so let me say that I'm sure these are all great people, but it doesn't add up. CC is hiring people from companis that they do not want to be comapred to! How great would it be if you saw someone coming in who came from Rolls-Royce, eh? I have no doubt in my mind that there would be a change in quality and overall image of the boats if some of CC's highest members came from European companies. Germany is famous for their quality, style, image, and so on...

Now I'm probably going to get bashed for making some of the most important people look bad, but CC is an American company, yet if they want to uphold European quality, they're going to have act on it... there is nothing more american than a right-wing company with christain-based ethics and morals.... I don't think Bill would want to see people on this site in 10 years saying "Correct Craft is like the chevy of boats"

How could it be improved? Only allow people to say nice things about us!!

sorry... lol.. its BECAUSE i care about the company...

[Fast351]

I have an 07 211. This is the first Nautique I've ever owned (as a matter of fact, it's the first dedicated ski boat I've ever owned, all others have been I/O's or outboard runabouts till now).

The boat now has 75 hours on it. It has had no major problems at all, and only a couple of minor problems. I feel pretty lucky because hand built ANYTHING will have minor problems. Think about the number of parts on a boat like this and the number of boats Correct Craft builds in a year and it's amazing that the quality is as good as it is. That said, I have noticed the same thing at least one other poster mentioned in this thread. The wastebasket that covers the heater access is VERY sloppily mounted. There are at least two screws that go into nothing but air, and several others that are in crooked and working their way out of the fiberglass. I'm probably going to end up mounting a couple of aluminum strips behind the fiberglass to hold the screws.

I will say that my dealer (Son Watersports in Anoka) has stood behind the product 100%. The couple minor problems I've had have been fixed quickly and correctly, with no bickering about warranty/no warranty, etc. I expect I will get many years of service out of my boat, and the problems that do arise will be similarly professionally handled.

Asking a boat like this to be perfect out of the gate is unrealistic. All I ask is when problems like this arise that the manufacturer acknowledge the problem and correct it. So far I have seen no evidence that this isn't the case.

[SNMike]

This IS without doubt, THE best Nautique owners website there is. Period!! IMVHO it is!! Am I wrong? Who's to say! It's my opinion. There's no right or wrong on that question, just opinion.

That said, take perfection!! Can't be had, even if you pay for it, you won't get it. Humans built it. Nuff said. I'm on my 6th Nautique, the first two I co-owned with my brother. Small imperfection here, small one there, no biggie. Absolutely ZERO major problem on all of them. Ever!! My new 07 is only a week old, so I won't count that one. But I'd bet real money on it's likely performance to come. I have a lot of friends with newer or brand new MC's, Bu's, and Tige's that are..........well......not happy. They think they got taken for what they paid for them compared to the real problems they've had. Problems that kept them off the water, and making trips to the dealer, and waiting for 3 weeks in one instance to get their boat back.

I think we all feel proud to own CC's. There's gonna be issue's, we already covered that. I'll take my chances with CC. SGY stated the interiors of the other brands were put together better than CC. I believe him.

My 196 will still bring more money at resale though. IMHO!!


Regards to you and yours!!!!

Mike

Thanks for a great site Jeff/Luke!! I'm grateful! Yellow_Flash_Colorz:

[ag4ever]

Good enough is the enemy of perfection!

If all we want is a good boat, then that is all we will ever get. if we demand we have a perfect boat, then we will get a perfect boat. And at 60,000 to 90,000 for one of these boats, we should be able to get a perfect boat.

I don't have any first hand knowledge of what CC is sending out the door, but if they can't tell the stiching is crooked, or that a door is not firmly mounted or that the combing pads are not mounted flush and warping, then they need a whole new QC department. Can the entire lot and start from scratch. With the amount of profit they are making on a single boat here , they should not be relying on the dealers to fix anything. The dealer should only have to perform a make ready on the boat (Install tower, windshield, and verify that nothing was damaged in transit, not fix a defictive part that was installed improperly).

When I graduated college, you could go buy just about any kind of boat you wanted for $1,000 a foot. This was true for performance boats, bass boats, ski boats, general runabouts, etc... Sure the price varried a bit depending on the brand, but the general rule was $1,000 a foot. (heck, I looked at a 30' Donzi that was about $35,000 at the time new) Now high end wake boats are pushing $4000 a foot. You can still get a nice Cobalt for $2500 a foot. That tells me the inboard manufactures are making way too much profit to be allowed to produce a product that is not perfect.

I know my '02 SANTE is a great boat, but it is not perfect. The factory wiring looks like an untrained monkey ran the wires for one.

All in all, for the price of the new boats, they better be perfect or I will just live with my old boat. And this is from a person that has considered trading up to a new 216 for the last couple years, but the obscene price of the new boats just keeps putting me off.

[SNMike]

Good enough is the enemy of perfection!

If all we want is a good boat, then that is all we will ever get. if we demand we have a perfect boat, then we will get a perfect boat. And at 60,000 to 90,000 for one of these boats, we should be able to get a perfect boat.

I don't have any first hand knowledge of what CC is sending out the door, but if they can't tell the stiching is crooked, or that a door is not firmly mounted or that the combing pads are not mounted flush and warping, then they need a whole new QC department. Can the entire lot and start from scratch. With the amount of profit they are making on a single boat here , they should not be relying on the dealers to fix anything. The dealer should only have to perform a make ready on the boat (Install tower, windshield, and verify that nothing was damaged in transit, not fix a defictive part that was installed improperly).

When I graduated college, you could go buy just about any kind of boat you wanted for $1,000 a foot. This was true for performance boats, bass boats, ski boats, general runabouts, etc... Sure the price varried a bit depending on the brand, but the general rule was $1,000 a foot. (heck, I looked at a 30' Donzi that was about $35,000 at the time new) Now high end wake boats are pushing $4000 a foot. You can still get a nice Cobalt for $2500 a foot. That tells me the inboard manufactures are making way too much profit to be allowed to produce a product that is not perfect.

I know my '02 SANTE is a great boat, but it is not perfect. The factory wiring looks like an untrained monkey ran the wires for one.

All in all, for the price of the new boats, they better be perfect or I will just live with my old boat. And this is from a person that has considered trading up to a new 216 for the last couple years, but the obscene price of the new boats just keeps putting me off.

Just for the record ag, I never meant that "good enough is good enough"! It's not!!I just meant that things will go wrong, and not always be "perfect". That's why Rolls Royce even have service shops.

Regards my friend!

Mike :grin:

[cam8901]

This discussion has been increasingly getting worse in picking apart the Correct Craft brand and quality control issue and I feel the need to input my thoughts. I purchased my 05 210 from NorthPoint Watersports, the second of two Nautiques I've owned, the other was a 89 2001, again purchased from NPWS. I have been in contact with my salesman from NP who left a few months ago and has been in the middle of all of this since the beginning. It is in fact the truth that NPWS was dropped by CC and the whole letter ( which I received mine late last week) is nothing but a ploy to make CC look bad in the eyes of their owners in anticipation that when MasterCraft teamed up with NPWS that they could potentially capture a share of the Nautique owners and switch them to MC by making CC look as if they have lost their quality. IMHO, this is the most childest, low class attempt to take business away. My two purchases from NPWS were complete opposites from each other, the latter, most disappointing. My 89 2001 I bought before NPWS merged with Team Carolina Marine. The manager met me at the dlrship on Labor Day (my only day off, and their only day to be closed) to deliver the boat (which I bought off consignment) so it wasn't even a true retail deal for them, but he took the time to make sure everything was correct and I was completely happy. That boat ran like a champ and I never had one single issue even with close to 1100 hrs on the engine. My second boat an 05 210 was purchased as a demo boat after the merger. I watched as Dave (the same guy who wrote the letter that started this whole debaucle) left me in the finance office while he went outside to ham it up with other co-workers and take phone calls, coming back every so often to attempt to complete my paperwork. Not having any of the files compete, not knowing what interest rate was quoted, not really caring about me being there at all. All of this as I watched him from his own office window. I was told everything was detailed and to be delivered in perfect condition, however, as particular about my stuff as I am, went through the whole boat and meticulously cleaned everything again. Not only did I find empty beer cans behind the rear seats, but leaves and trash in almost every nook and cranny. It was only because my salesman BT took care of me every step of the way and made sure that anything that I felt should be questioned, was resolved. My first experience was on a $10K purchase, my second for $50K...now how do think I felt about that?

This entire situation quite frankly has excited me because not only did my salesman BT, their top saleman, leave to go work for the Tige dlr which will be the location of the new Nautique dealership, but I expect that I will recieve 100% better service than ever before from the new dealer. This is b/c the new dealer actually wants CC as his store. NPWS carried Centurion and other larger brands, and never really cared much at all about carrying the Nautique brand, as there was never parts, accessories, or much to do with CC at the dealership. Thank you CC for seeing how a single dealership can bring your reputation down and having the balls to remove yourselves from the problem. You build the best boat in the water by far. Sure there may be some instances where something may go wrong, but I challenge anyone to find a dealer of another brand, any brand, and go in their dealership and not find one boat that isn't in need of a repair of one thing or another. It's a man made product and sometimes things will break. Malibu has issues, MasterCraft has issues, Supra has issues and so on, but our boats drive, handle, and provide us with an experience that gets out blood boiling and that is why we keep coming back!!!!!!!!!!! I ask that you fellow Nautique owners disregard the letter that was sent and posted in this forum as a complete joke and waste of time and lets get back to doing what we do best, which is discussing our love for Correct Craft!

[MHayes]

Very nicely said cam8901.

All I can say is that you must be a patient man to sit there and watch Dave shoot the bull and not give you the consideration that you deserve while purchasing a $50K boat. I have to be honest, if someone was that unprepared and seemed to not care about me purchasing an expensive boat from him, I'd make sure that he knew it. I guess that's the unfortunate thing about boat dealers compared to car dealers, you can't just hop in the car and go down the street a few minutes to the next Nautique dealer most of the time.

[Kenv]

Cam,

Good post. You made some excellent points. I've posted a few times on this topic but wanted to say just a few more things to summarize my point of view:

1. I'm a 2-time Nautique owner, I read the letter and even if the dealer pulled a stinky, which seems to be the consensus, he mentioned something that caught my eye and others that own these boats...the Quality has been slipping - and, the price has been going up. His letter may be full of crap, but there really has been a lot of new sloppy boats ending up in CC owners hands. That's just the FACTS. Will I sell my boat because of it.. no, will I buy another CC... yes, do I care if MC or BU is better or worse.... NO, because I like my boat. Do I notice my crooked seats, crooked stripes, crooked steering wheel, bad wiring (Hypothetically - my 2005 is free of all these mentioned) every time I get in my boat, YES. Does it start right up and provide a day of fun in the sun..Yes. Like others have said, the positives outweight the negatives.

Also, I think the general terms "Things going wrong" or "loose items as part of normal wear and tear" should not be confused with "SLOPPY WORK from the FACTORY!!"

2. I don't care if it's a $95,000 Nautique or a $24,000 Tahoe fun boat, the seat should be even with the other side... if not close to perfect line up!!! I think if I ever took possesion of a CC and the Nautique was sewn upside down on the seat (like someone on here mentioned), I would personally fly to Florida, walk up to the factory and show them the seat. Hopefully, my great dealer, can I mention Sail & Ski-SA on here again, would not let it go out the door like that!!

3. I don't think people started picking apart CC until the little things that easily should have been right from the (old or new) factory, started ending up in owners hands.
I think alot of people thought it was a tighter run outfit. These same people that might have made fun of a Bayliner a fews years ago now have to make sure the Bayliner guy doesn't get a peak of a CC interior - Just Kidding

[lztat573]

I have owned two Nautiques. First 99 SN, Second 07 211 the first one was bought by a dealer like stated above and after the purchase I felt like I was left out in the cold, and I was so happy when I found out that they were not a dealer anymore. The new dealers are the opposite, came home with the boat and now friends with them. Now I feel like part of the Nautique family, where before I felt like I was alone. So I believe CC gets feed back from their customers and listens when it comes to dealers. With that said now we go to quality. If we don't let CC know what is wrong with our boats, and have the attitude that they're just human and make mistakes, and fix them ourselves, or just live with them. then they will just keep making them. If we let CC know by warantee (through the dealer), web forms (if they read), and any other way we can. Then, I think things will get fixed at the factory, and not be left to be done by the warantee-dealer. If it does not get done, then CC needs to fire all their QC and start new.

[cam8901]

Thanks for the comments...I have been figuring out a way to share some thoughts without acutally sharing what I am REALLY thinking. The new CC dealer that is taking over from NPWS is getting inventory starting today. Not that I'm ready to swap boats again, but atleast the ball is rolling in getting Nautique to a new location. They are already talking a variety of upcoming events, Nautique Reunions for instance and customer appreciation days and so forth. This is so refreshing to hear that they actually want to be a part of something more than just moving a unit off the floor. Being in the luxury car business myself, I know that it takes more than simply selling a vehicle/boat to retain business and generate new business. It means taking care of the client when something goes wrong. I can't tell you how my heart drops every time I get a call from a client who purchased a $100K+ car from me stating there is a problem. However, as long as I can provide the same level of service and care as I did when I sold the car, the customer is more times than not, understanding of the issue and completly satisfied when I return the car back in proper working order. This holds true for clients who purchase a $40K car to $150K car...they are all the same and should be treated the same. This should hold true for any product, especially large purchases such as ours are...