West Marine vs. Boat U.S. prices

[Tom]

This raises one of those moral dilemnas. It's nice to be able to beat down West's price by quoting Defender, BUT in some way I feel that we should be trying to support the store that is giving us a fair price and NOT patronize the store that is trying to rip us off unless we catch them at it. So if you use the Defender catalog only to price things, but you give the sale to West then you're supporting the very guys who tried to rip you off. In some way it seems like we should support the guys who are trying to be fair by buying from them.

As far as service from West, I live in an area where the closest West store is 200 miles away, therefore I deal with them strictly via mail. I've never noticed any better service from them than Defender or anyone else. And West only ships FedExpress which to our area on the Central Coast is 5 day delivery and they won't ship UPS which is two days to here. Maybe if you have one locally and you walk into the store you can get service.

And then West does those dirty little things. Like they used to carry Armada and Cetol. Then they got Cetol to put Cetol up under their own label which they call Wood Pro. Now they don't carry Armada and have left all of us Armada users out in the cold. You can get Armada at Svensen's in Alameda, Walt, and that's in your area, but that's just an example of West's policy.

Don't get me wrong, I buy most of my stuff from West and spend ten times more there than I do at Defender, but I do check at Defender and others and if there is a big price difference I try to give the sale to the guys who have been the fairest with me. Just a thought.

I just got off the phone with WM in my area. I told them about the Defender price on the Metz antenna, and they will credit my account the differance. Also, this local store has a "store to door" program that if you order it from the store (and they dont have it in stock)and it weighs less than 12 lbs (I think its 12) they will pay the shipping. I use this to offset the cost of having to pay sales tax now that there are WM stores in Oklahoma.

Strange about the catalogs. I was just in the store last week and they had two or three palettes (sp) full of catalogs and they were giving them away!!! (then again i had spent several $KKK over the last 3 months so they might have just looked the other way....)

Finally they dont even ask when I want to return an item. Some of which is 5 or 6 years old, that I was dissatisfied with (at the time immediately following purchase) and just didnt want to pay the shipping back to catalogue returns. They refund/credit the money without question. The only time I was refused a price match was on a closeout Navico TP300 (from BoatUS)...And they said that they could not match the BoatUS price.

And no I dont work for WM.....But hey, who know, maybe someone from Corperate headquarters will see this tread and.....oh well probably NOT.

Fair Winds

Bill

I used to be a big West Marine fan. Now I am mixed, leaning negative. It's the only large chandlery in the S.F. Bay Area, unfortunately, so I am stuck with it. Boat/US has stores in southern California, which does me no good and requires them to charge me sales tax on mail orders.

West Marine used to give catalogs and tide tables away free. If we asked about items not in stock, they used to urge us to let them order the item in, so we could look at it. Now the catalogs are $10, they sell the same tide tables that the marinas give away, and for a while there was a restocking charge on items ordered in, even if they were catalog items.

To be fair, the local (Sausalito) store has some employees I've relied on for advice many times over the years. Recently a well-respected former manager has returned to straighten the store out, and we have high hopes. But the bean counters need to stop pinching pennies at the cost of West Marine's reputation.

Defender is known for having the lowest price and not much service. It's the only catalog I know that publishes the manufacturers' phone numbers for most items, so Defender won't have to answer phone questions.

My recommendation is to take the Defender catalog to West Marine and get price matches.

- Walt

TomCambria@mindspring.com

[Bob Malinka]

Today I went into the local West Marine store here in Islip Long Island, NY, that I usually support with a long list of things I needed to pick up. I was stunned to find out that they had only 3 of the items I was looking for: one roll of masking tape, 30ft of 1/4" line and a tube of Boat Life polysulfide. They were out of stock or could not get me all of the other items I was looking for including a quart of Interlux Brightside Polyurethane "Chocolate Brown" for the boot top stripe. BTW they also went into their computer and said that they could not order the chocolate brown color topside paint as it was discontinued. So I guess West Marine is telling us we can't have brown boot tops anymore and should switch to one of their other colors they stock.

Some of the items I was looking for like a Gel Coat repair kit, polyurethane boot top paint, Fram fuel filters, 80 grit sand paper, Cetol and many others were all not to be found. I don't know who stocks or runs the store now but something is wrong here. I went to BoatsUS and guess what they had everything and the price on several of these items was cheaper. What I don't like about West Marine is that we use to have many different marine stores in the area, which were well run, but West Marine bought a lot of them out one by one and then jacked up the prices. But now after a few years new marine stores have opened such as BoatUS and others, and they seem to be more attentive to the stock with better prices. It just annoys me that I should have to travel all over the place when they don't have stock on items that should be in the store. In this instance they were out of almost everything I was looking for and this has happened more than once.

Another thing I noticed is that they have very young inexperienced help. While at the West Marine store a fellow sailor came in looking for line to replace his flag pennant and some hardware to go with it. The local store help did not seem to be very knowledgable on what the store had in stock or what the man needed. I over heard the customer and knew what he was looking for so I helped him. I soon found myself directing the store help on where to find the items and what to give their customer. Needless to say he thanked me many times for helping him.

Bob

This raises one of those moral dilemnas. It's nice to be able to beat down West's price by quoting Defender, BUT in some way I feel that we should be trying to support the store that is giving us a fair price and NOT patronize the store that is trying to rip us off unless we catch them at it. So if you use the Defender catalog only to price things, but you give the sale to West then you're supporting the very guys who tried to rip you off. In some way it seems like we should support the guys who are trying to be fair by buying from them.

As far as service from West, I live in an area where the closest West store is 200 miles away, therefore I deal with them strictly via mail. I've never noticed any better service from them than Defender or anyone else. And West only ships FedExpress which to our area on the Central Coast is 5 day delivery and they won't ship UPS which is two days to here. Maybe if you have one locally and you walk into the store you can get service.

And then West does those dirty little things. Like they used to carry Armada and Cetol. Then they got Cetol to put Cetol up under their own label which they call Wood Pro. Now they don't carry Armada and have left all of us Armada users out in the cold. You can get Armada at Svensen's in Alameda, Walt, and that's in your area, but that's just an example of West's policy.

Don't get me wrong, I buy most of my stuff from West and spend ten times more there than I do at Defender, but I do check at Defender and others and if there is a big price difference I try to give the sale to the guys who have been the fairest with me. Just a thought.

I just got off the phone with WM in my area. I told them about the Defender price on the Metz antenna, and they will credit my account the differance. Also, this local store has a "store to door" program that if you order it from the store (and they dont have it in stock)and it weighs less than 12 lbs (I think its 12) they will pay the shipping. I use this to offset the cost of having to pay sales tax now that there are WM stores in Oklahoma.

Strange about the catalogs. I was just in the store last week and they had two or three palettes (sp) full of catalogs and they were giving them away!!! (then again i had spent several $KKK over the last 3 months so they might have just looked the other way....)

Finally they dont even ask when I want to return an item. Some of which is 5 or 6 years old, that I was dissatisfied with (at the time immediately following purchase) and just didnt want to pay the shipping back to catalogue returns. They refund/credit the money without question. The only time I was refused a price match was on a closeout Navico TP300 (from BoatUS)...And they said that they could not match the BoatUS price.

And no I dont work for WM.....But hey, who know, maybe someone from Corperate headquarters will see this tread and.....oh well probably NOT.

Fair Winds

Bill

I used to be a big West Marine fan. Now I am mixed, leaning negative. It's the only large chandlery in the S.F. Bay Area, unfortunately, so I am stuck with it. Boat/US has stores in southern California, which does me no good and requires them to charge me sales tax on mail orders.

West Marine used to give catalogs and tide tables away free. If we asked about items not in stock, they used to urge us to let them order the item in, so we could look at it. Now the catalogs are $10, they sell the same tide tables that the marinas give away, and for a while there was a restocking charge on items ordered in, even if they were catalog items.

To be fair, the local (Sausalito) store has some employees I've relied on for advice many times over the years. Recently a well-respected former manager has returned to straighten the store out, and we have high hopes. But the bean counters need to stop pinching pennies at the cost of West Marine's reputation.

Defender is known for having the lowest price and not much service. It's the only catalog I know that publishes the manufacturers' phone numbers for most items, so Defender won't have to answer phone questions.

My recommendation is to take the Defender catalog to West Marine and get price matches.

- Walt

ranger1442@hotmail.com

[Warren Kaplan]

Bob,
I was in the same West Marine store in Islip the other day. They were out of alot of stuff I needed. It was much better when it was still Shane's Marine. I know what your saying about all the independant stores being bought out. No selection at all anymore. I also use the West Marine in Port Jefferson (near my office) and its stock is identical to the Islip store. The only independant marine stores that I know of on Long Island near us are in Freeport. There's Fred Chall Marine, which is pretty small, and of course there's good old Freeport Marine which has everything....if you are a power boater. But its does have the "universal stuff" i.e. bottom paint, cleats, gel coat patch, that all boaters can use. You might look on line at "performance yacht" www.pyacht.com
Warren



Setsail728@aol.com

[Sean]

I used to be a big West Marine fan. Now I am mixed, leaning negative. It's the only large chandlery in the S.F. Bay Area, unfortunately, so I am stuck with it. Boat/US has stores in southern California, which does me no good and requires them to charge me sales tax on mail orders.

West Marine used to give catalogs and tide tables away free. If we asked about items not in stock, they used to urge us to let them order the item in, so we could look at it. Now the catalogs are $10, they sell the same tide tables that the marinas give away, and for a while there was a restocking charge on items ordered in, even if they were catalog items.

To be fair, the local (Sausalito) store has some employees I've relied on for advice many times over the years. Recently a well-respected former manager has returned to straighten the store out, and we have high hopes. But the bean counters need to stop pinching pennies at the cost of West Marine's reputation.

Defender is known for having the lowest price and not much service. It's the only catalog I know that publishes the manufacturers' phone numbers for most items, so Defender won't have to answer phone questions.

My recommendation is to take the Defender catalog to West Marine and get price matches.

- Walt

Are any of you guys in retail? Is this a flame West Marine site? Just because a store doesn't have what you were looking for - does that mean they don't care about you as a customer?
Try looking at things from the other side of the counter - consider what any retail business has to consider.

1) Overhead - how expensive is it to lease the space they are in? (Gee - let me guess how "inexpensive" the Manhatten store lease is....)

2) No store - Boat US , Defender, Boaters World, West or anyone can possibly carry everything - get real! Any idea how expensive the everyday items would cost if a retailer did stock items they only sold once in a while? Why do you think West, Boat US and Boaters World do "back orders or special orders"? If any of these stores did not have the item you wanted in stock, did you bother to ask why, could they get it in? Perhaps you were the first person to ever ask for it.

3) Do you get a paycheck - do you work for free? All these companies are in business to make money. Nothing wrong with that is there? A company that sells widgets for next to nothing must have no customer service, no returns, and no overhead to stay around.

Consumers can and do have the ability to shape the way chandlery's do business, give the managers your feedback bad AND good. Behavior that is rewarded is repeated. Bad service - tell the manager! How can they fix a problem if they don't know about it?

And, yes I am in retail. It doesn't really matter for whom, since your comments about West Marine and others can just as easily be addressed to a Target, Best Buy, or a Joe's Cafe as they can a boat supply store. Sean



foursailors @prodigy.com