Sinewave

True Tony , The circuit judge at Coventry did in fact say that they were breaking corporate law by using the "At Valley Cruises" bit instead of "Excellence Afloat Ltd" . He also advised the trader that it was a legal requirement to add the "Ltd" onto Excellence Afloat, yes I believe you are correct that the Springwood based hire business was sold off.

Agreed but the example I gave is just one site, However one court case the defendant lost and another almost certainly pending speaks volumes don't you think??.

Topic Update As the wife and I have now finally won our case for Breach Of Contract I can now reveal that the traders company name was Excellence Afloat at valley cruises. The problems with the electrical system on the boat were caused by the fact that the leisure batteries were ruined prior to our hire, A subsequent document in the form of an " Engineers pre hire check list" miraculously became available and was submitted by the trader as evidence at the final hearing, this was a bad mistake as the check list clearly displayed the readings taken by the engineer. The reading for the standing voltage of the three leisure batteries ( taken whilst they were still linked in parallel ) was 11.63 volts , the correct term for this reading is the "Open Circuit Voltage". The trader stated that this reading indicated that the batteries were low of charge, when in fact the reading indicates that the batteries were in a state of heavy discharge , this fact should have been known to a competent marine engineer who; at the very least should have investigated the reason for the discharge prior to the hiring out of the boat. It has been said that a lot of members on this forum have heard nothing but good reports, and read nothing but good reviews about this well thought of trader, I say it depends on where you look. Try an independent review body : https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g186403-d12512635-Reviews-Coventry_Valley_Cruises-Coventry_West_Midlands_England.html?m=19905

Hi Justin/Cuthound Yes guys I agree, there is always something goes a bit pear shaped with boats, especially hire boats toward the end of a busy season, and yes I tend to not let minor issues ruin what would otherwise have been a great break from work messing around in a boat. That said though, I draw the line when traders take liberties with our generally good nature, things have moved on a little since I first opened this thread, I have actually took this case through the county court and won by default as the trader did not bother to defend. He also did not bother to honour the courts decision either so have had to send in the bailiffs, now!!! he has bothered alright, He has applied for a set aside to get the CCJ removed and the court has sent me a copy of his evidence, needless to say the trader has moved the goalposts that far he would have been better putting wheels on them, hearing is on 5/4/18 so hopefully a resolution is nigh.

I obviously cannot say to much about the trader at this stage Tony for legal reasons, I also have no wish to do serious damage to the traders hard earned reputation, The trader himself, his ex partner and his boatyard staff are excellent and very nice people to deal with. I think the weak link in the chain is this one particular engineer, In general conversation with members of the yard staff they give the impression that this engineer is very arrogant and a bit of a know it all, (their words not mine) but on arriving back from our hire period I had the opportunity to speak with him face to face so I took him to task over how he could justify allowing a boat to be hired out to a member of the public knowing that the temporary fix he had made would not last beyond the first engine stop. Did he realise not making a proper repair and not declaring the fact that the hirer would have to keep making this shunt throughout the hire period would, in fact, mean the company would be in Breach of Contract on two counts at least , boat unfit for purpose, not declaring a condition which could affect the customers decision to continue with the hire , He replied he had made the trader and his boat yard staff aware of the situation and claimed it was their fault for turning the boat engine off when he had told them to leave it running , quite what this has to do with the fact he made a poor job of the repair i don't know, Unfortunately Tony this is only one of several issues which I won't go into at this stage, but after several exchanges with the trader who will not concede he was at fault through his engineer's actions, I have had to take legal action, as he would not agree to mediation/arbitration or supply a letter of deadlock I was left with no other choice.

Thank you for the info Tony, yes it's possible the boats came from another operator. Yes I agree the situation with the leisure batteries is very odd, on inspection of the batteries (3 in the leisure bank) 2 looked fairly new and the other looked in good condition, I have only ever seen the manual shunt he applied for the purpose of (shocking) near completely flat older batteries into taking a charge. As I said I did not have any kit with me so I could not meter the wiring but you could well be right about the alternator being initially excited from the leisure bank, instead of from the start battery, and yes if the leisure bank were near flat a boost from the starter battery would possibly be enough to induce the alternator charge voltage. The split charger was most definitely an older wired model of the Durite range, round and orange, the give away for it being trigger wire activated was the fact that it had an input terminal and no light to indicate automatic relay operation, the details on the relay itself were unreadable because of its age but Durite's generally energise at somewhere between 13.5 to 14.2 volts I believe, but the problem must have been split charger related because the shunt had to be re-applied at every engine stop and re-start , if the problem was just low charge stopping the excitement of the alternator then surely applying the shunt once and charging the leisure batteries up would have enabled them to supply enough voltage at the next startup

The trader was most definitely not Ashby Boat's, As I understand it the trader I am talking about made a few phone calls to see if any other business's could help out as he did not have a duty engineer available. Trinity marina declined, but Ashby Boat Hire said if I made my way up to them they would supply help or at least some kit and advice if they could, Bless them.

To be fair, for boats that are hired to the general public the electrical systems only need to be very basic, i.e. lights, water pump, inverter, heating pump, ignition and charging circuits and that's about it. I am not 100% sure but I think the fleet used to be ex Hoseasons boats, The fleet has obviously been seriously revamped because the boats fixtures, fittings and layout are excellent, I guess they have not got around to the electrics yet but they should really.

Of course, especially on this occasion, As I say, it was handover day so we did not pick the boat up till late afternoon anyway, we could have just as easily spent the first night in the boat yard to give him time to fix it. The two alternate measures I have already mentioned (VSR or switch) would have only taken a competent engineer/fitter about an hour, and that includes the proverbial tea break.

Oh yes , I have had several exchanges of emails, Even sent schematic diagrams from 12 and 240 volt reference books explaining the split charge circuits and how they work. I explained to the trader that the problem did not lay with the alternator as it was charging the start battery, as I have said the "Duric" model split charger fitted to the boat was the older wired type requiring a permanent "trigger wire", and I think that was the problem because the purpose of the shunt was to by-pass this wire. The problem is the trader (by his own admission ) is not very savvy about electro/mechanical issues so he relies on what this engineer tells him, and I think the engineer takes advantage of this fact when he wants to get out of doing certain jobs.

Yes I did do the repair myself, But the engineer guided me, that's when alarm bells started ringing in my head. He told me he had worked on the boat on the morning of our handover to repair a problem with the alternator not charging the leisure batteries, he then stated that he told boat yard staff to leave the boat's engine running to charge the batteries, however; the engine was stopped to allow the cleaning and service crew to work and his repair failed. He went on to say it was an easy repair to re-do, I would just need to obtain a jump lead from somewhere and phone him back for instructions, which I did. On receiving his instructions for the repair I was totally aghast, What he told me to do was run the engine at a fast idle the get into the engine well and remove the battery box cover, the place one end of the jumper lead on the +(positive) pole of the start battery , and the other end onto any + of the leisure batteries, leave for ten seconds and the remove the jump lead, Job done just run the boat for as long as you can to put charge in the batteries. In essence then, he had not repaired the fault prior to our hire, he had just by-passed it with this manual shunt, This is just a get you out of the do-do measure and at best is a very temporary quick fix, so temporary in fact that it fails on every engine shutdown and requires to be remade on every start up. Engineer my A***, I did not have kit with me but my best guess was that the trigger wire to the old type Duric split charge relay was left off ,broken or missing , but as the alternator was able to charge the start battery a simple (VSR) voltage sensing relay wired between start and leisure batteries would have done the trick or failing that just wire a manual shunt to a temporary battery isolator switch. But no!! This guy got the batteries temporarily charging and that was good enough for him, said nothing about the situation , and was quite happy to send the boat out on hire in this condition. And yes it's not to hard to figure out who the trader is and your right his boat's are excellent and well appointed, If nothing goes wrong I can imagine hirer's having nothing but praise , But have a problem and the service is dire.

Exactly my point, I don't mind the fact that he could not attend and I had to fix the problem myself. BUT mishaps, accidents and incidents can be minor or major, so the least I expected was a quick call back from the engineer to check the degree of our issue.

Impact of the collective issue's was about 60% , I Paid a tad over £1,300.00 for a weeks holiday hire as a special treat for the wife and I. We are both in our 60s now and the last time we had a boat was back in the year 2000. So not being as agile as we once were, we chose the Ashby canal and a bit of the Coventry as our route (no locks) together with a British Marine Member to supply the boat for a nice relaxing weeks cruising, (or so we thought ) Long story short , we had 4 or 5 issue's with the boat, the engineer and the trader that cost us 3 days cruising , all were down to the trader and his engineer. The Trader refused to remunerate for the lost 3 days even though the issues we had were solely down to the trader and his engineer. it's all just escalated from there.

Thank you David, I have had quite a few issues with this particular trader, Most of them have been Consumer Rights related. I just wanted to check that I had not broken any laws by working on his boat. I Have to be careful about libel because I think this will end up in court so cannot say much at present, However I think he will have a job explaining why he boasts excellent service and a 24/7 emergency callout service, when his "DUTY" engineer takes 7.5 hours to return my emergency call, tells me he can't attend and my best option is to fix it myself. Ian

Hi all, I recently hired a narrowboat which developed a fault with the leisure batteries not charging, Upon calling the boatyard for assistance I was told the duty engineer was not available to attend but would give instructions over the phone for me to fix myself. As a member of the public and just a consumer would it be Legal for me to attempt to fix it myself without insurance. Any feedback on this would be much appreciated. Sinewave (Ian)