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Aintree Boats - my experience


Phil F

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In August this year I bought a 30ft Aintree Bettle which had a build date of July 2018. The engine had only done 35hrs so all good. Then we have the problems:

1. The Beetle has a wet room with Thetford cassette electric flush toilet. To attach the wires and pipes to this toilet they cut a 4inch square hole in the wet room floor and then threw a few lumps of sealant over the hole. This was discovered when water leaked into the corridor.

2. The general quality and finish of the sealant application throughout the wet room was terrible -  amateurish would be an insult to a bad amateur.

3. The windows internally have been sealed with a light brown sealant. This is also of a very poor standard of application - most windows have gaps in the sealant adjacent to the hinges. One window has no internal sealant at all !

4.  I then discovered water in the bottom of the kitchen cupboard. In an attempt to find out where the leak was coming from I had to pull out the fridge only to find water in the adjacent space and a spaghetti junction of hose pipes and jubilee clips covered in silicon. The leak was eventually traced to the sink tap which, surprisingly, was connected to a thin hose by a jubilee clip without silicon plastered all over it. The kitchen units, now leak free, are starting to bloat as they dry out.

 

All of this I was prepared to grudgingly accept because I could work round it and the rest of the boat seemed fine and virtually new  - or so I thought. Now we come to the biggy.

 

5. 2 weeks ago I decided to have the boat serviced. The day it went in I got a call from the yard to say I need to come and look at the boat. Why ? Because the engine had been incorrectly fitted !

The elbow joint at the bottom of the sump was resting on the steel crossbeam of the hull. It had gouged out a grove in the crossbeam due to the vibrations when the engine is running. Fortunately, this had not caused damage to the elbow joint which would have caused all the oil to pour out of the engine.

 

Contacted Aintree Boats by phone regarding the engine whose first response was that at 15 months old it was out of warranty. Subsequently, I have had no response to emails etc. Technically they are right but morally no way. Legally I am not sure where I stand but I intend to find out and pursue for compensation if possible. Regardless, I think it is important to make people aware of my experience and the claims by Aintree Boats that their boats are quality built and their customer service excellent. A company should be judged not by its claims but by how it deals with genuine, valid, problems and complaints, especially when they are wholly responsible for the fault.

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Thanks for the replies and support. Not wanting Aintree to put it right because got the boatyard to refit engine and fix hull. Plus, I don't think i'd trust them to do a good job.  Otherwise, I'd have a boat that I daren't use waiting for an outfit that ignores correspondence and it could have gone on for months. Total cost was £330 - not as bad as would have been if engine had lost all oil. So, not a massive sum but worth fighting for.

 

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1 hour ago, Phil F said:

In August this year I bought a 30ft Aintree Bettle which had a build date of July 2018.

Did you buy the boat directly from Aintree Boats, or from another retailer?
Are you the first owner, or was there a previous one?
When you bought the boat did you have it surveyed?

If you bought it from another retailer then it is them who are liable for any warranty, not Aintree.

And I suspect the answer to the last question is going to be "no".

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Presumably as it was second hand when you bought it, it was not purchased directly from Aintree.

 

If it was purchased from a 'broker' who was representing / selling on behalf of an 'individual' and it was not sold as part of a business then you have no warranty.

If it was owned by the broker selling it then you would be legally covered as long as you could prove 'it was not fit for purpose'.

You have absolutely no come-back on Aintree and they were (legally) correct to tell you to 'go away'.

 

This is why many people advise that you have a surveyor 'go-over' your potential purchase so you have someone to blame (rather than yourself) when the problems are not identified.

 

 

  • Greenie 1
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I would say this is a latent defect caused by their negligence and as such (my understanding and I am not a lawyer) it is not necessarily time limited to the warranty period.  I quick call to trading standards may clarify for you and your options.
 

 This is based on my assumption that you bought it from the boat builder.  If not you will struggle to prove the previous owner did not adjust the engine height etc.........

Edited by Chewbacka
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14 minutes ago, Chewbacka said:

I would say this is a latent defect caused by their negligence and as such (my understanding and I am not a lawyer) it is not necessarily time limited to the warranty period.  I quick call to trading standards may clarify for you and your options.
 

 This is based on my assumption that you bought it from the boat builder.  If not you will struggle to prove the previous owner did not adjust the engine height etc.........

But even if if it can be proven that the owner didn’t adjust the engine height etc, there is no contract between the OP and the manufacturer and so I can’t see how any legal claim could succeed.

 

Annoying but to be honest in the great scheme of things this fault isn’t massive. Aintree is a budget builder and you can’t expect the same quality of build as you’d get from a premium builder.

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19 minutes ago, Chewbacka said:

This is based on my assumption that you bought it from the boat builder.

The OP did say that he bought it a 1 year old and with 35 hours 'on the clock' so unless the manufacturer had taken it back on a P/X or warranty claim it was not likely to be under any warranty.

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9 minutes ago, nicknorman said:

But even if if it can be proven that the owner didn’t adjust the engine height etc, there is no contract between the OP and the manufacturer and so I can’t see how any legal claim could succeed.

 

Annoying but to be honest in the great scheme of things this fault isn’t massive. Aintree is a budget builder and you can’t expect the same quality of build as you’d get from a premium builder.

Their Beetle boats are certainly not 'budget boats' though, for the size of them!

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Having heard the Aintree customer service response when we were telling them that nobody had welded the top of the rudder (not shaft, thanks kwacker) but tube on a brand new boat ,where it meets the counter top and water was filling the diesel tank.......

 

Eventually after sending out a bloke to have a look (not a welder), they agreed to pay for the lift out and work done, and despatched a welder to fill the 4" gap left by "someone they had got rid of" recently.

They ommited to say who falsified the tank pressure testing cert. 

They are cheap, and cheerful, get one checked out, snagging completed ,whilst STILL IN THE YARD, and you will have lots of pleasure if you look after them.

 

Edited by matty40s
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2 minutes ago, matty40s said:

Having heard the Aintree customer service response when we were telling them that nobody had welded the top of the rudder shaft on a brand new boat ,where it meets the counter top and water was filling the diesel tank.......

 

Eventually after sending out a bloke to have a look (not a welder), they agreed to pay for the lift out and work done, and despatched a welder to fill the 4" gap left by "someone they had got rid of" recently.

They ommited to say who falsified the tank pressure testing cert. 

They are cheap, and cheerful, get one checked out, snagging completed ,whilst STILL IN THE YARD, and you will have lots of pleasure if you look after them.

 

rudder tube?

1 minute ago, Arthur Marshall said:

The whole list sounds more like a boat bought as a sailaway and fitted out on the cheap.

Although, as the whole point of boats is to have a pit into which you can tip money, it's probably a good thing that he's started as the way he's going to go on...

that makes a lot of sense.

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8 minutes ago, Kwacker said:

I’d take a close look at the Sale of Goods Act.

That won't do much good, it was repealed in  2015.

 

It was replaced by the Consumer Goods Act which if read will show that he has absolutely no come back.

 

Under the Consumer Rights Act you have a legal right to reject goods that are of unsatisfactory quality, unfit for purpose or not as described, and get a full refund - as long as you do this quickly. 

This right is limited to 30 days from the date you take ownership of your product. After 30 days, you will not be legally entitled to a full refund if your item develops a fault, although some sellers may offer you an extended refund period. 

Second hand goods :

When you buy from an individual (as opposed to a retailer), the Consumer Rights Act says that the goods you get must be as they were described to you by the seller.

There's no obligation on the seller to disclose any faults, but misrepresenting goods isn't allowed.

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14 hours ago, Chewbacka said:

I would say this is a latent defect caused by their negligence and as such (my understanding and I am not a lawyer) it is not necessarily time limited to the warranty period.  I quick call to trading standards may clarify for you and your options.
 

 This is based on my assumption that you bought it from the boat builder.  If not you will struggle to prove the previous owner did not adjust the engine height etc.........

The main  test is surely 'fit for purpose'?

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The hasn't said who it bought it off.  Until we know that, everything said in here is irrelevant.  The contact is between the purchaser and the seller.  If Aintree Boats weren't the seller than they have no legal obligation.

 

Quote: "This is based on my assumption that you bought it from the boat builder. If not you will struggle to prove the previous owner did not adjust the engine height etc......... "

 

If they didn't buy it from the boat builder, then it doesn't matter whether the previous owner diddled about with it. 

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2 hours ago, doratheexplorer said:

If they didn't buy it from the boat builder, then it doesn't matter whether the previous owner diddled about with it. 

Correct - if he bought it from a private seller, or a broker (who did not own the boat) then he has no come back on anyone else but himself.

 

UNLESS , he got in writing (or can prove otherwise) that the seller stated there were 'no problems' with the boat and specifically stated that there were no problems with the things the OP has identified.

 

I doubt anyone would say "there is no problem with the mastic around the sink" etc etc.

 

Second hand boats really are caveat Emptor !!

 

I'm guessing that the OP did not employ a surveyor as it sounds as all of these 'problems' are glaringly obvious to anyone with any boat knowledge

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20 hours ago, nicknorman said:

But even if if it can be proven that the owner didn’t adjust the engine height etc, there is no contract between the OP and the manufacturer and so I can’t see how any legal claim could succeed.

 

Annoying but to be honest in the great scheme of things this fault isn’t massive. Aintree is a budget builder and you can’t expect the same quality of build as you’d get from a premium builder.

Or the exclusive services of a butler ............

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7 hours ago, Mike Todd said:

fit for purpose

In this context “fit for purpose” means does it serve for the purpose for which it is described.  So if a retailer sells you a wheelbarrow, but describes it as a baby buggy, the product clearly is not fit for the purpose for which it was sold.

 

So far as we know, the OP was sold something which was described as a boat, and it serves the purpose of being a boat.  The question which should be asked, and always was under the old Sale of Goods Act, is “is it of merchantable quality”, now that’s the debate!

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Reads like a self fit out, I would have thought the OPs surveyor would have advised on the general quality of fit outta the very least. Although the OP was aware of the majority of niggling issues before purchasing which should have rung alarm bells perhaps

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