Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/1380
feature 35 July 2009 Busted Pump? After a shop put in a new water pump for a customer, he stormed into their place "raising hell" and carrying on about having to pay for a water pump that didn't work. The shop foreman says the man was so irate and almost out of control they thought they might have to call the police. When they went with him to his boat, they found out he had been turn- ing on the wrong switch. The shop says they lost his business, not because of their work, but because they think he was too embarrassed to deal with them again. Balanced Dosage One customer was semi-irate about the fact the audio speakers on his houseboat were not working. The technician patiently listened to the fairly common refrain of "I paid a lot of money, these don't work and I want it fixed now." When the technician got aboard the boat, he quickly discovered the customer had set the speaker balance completely to the right side. A simple turn of the balance control knob fixed the problem. At least, according to the technician, the customer was embarrassed enough that it showed. Complete Package A common category involves houseboaters who "know everything" and attempt to do their own service work. One customer decided he just wasn't going to pay to have his engine and generator winterized because a) he knew exactly what to do, and b) it wasn't that big a job. The facts here are that he apparently did know how to winterize the generator, but not the engine. That is why he slunk back to the shop the next spring so they could order and install a new engine for him. But he did learn something in the process as the shop reports he called them in the fall to winterize everything. A Little Dribbler This one is another "do it yourself" story; there are many out there. After one owner completed some of his own work, his boat was launched but mechanics noticed water drib- bling into the engine compartment through three pinholes in the forward bulkhead. When the owner was given an estimate for the repair work, he decided it was too expensive so just had the boat put in its slip. Eventually the motor compartment flooded, the bilge pump burned out and the owner had to buy a new engine that cost far more than what the repair work would have been. A follow-up to that story is that the same mechanic saw that boat three years later after the boat was sold. He dis- covered the previous owner had jammed foam earplugs into the holes then covered them with duct tape and put another patch on top of that before painting the whole mess. Just A Flash Another "do it yourself" story involves a generator. The owner had the yard remove his generator so he could rebuild it at home. He unhooked everything so their only job was to lift it out. After he worked on it, they put it back in and he said he would hook it up later. When the shop launched the boat, water began leaking into the engine compart- ment. They located the leak and told the owner they could fix it right away with their portable welder and he gave his permission. But when a worker created some sparks while grinding the area clean, there was a flash explosion. It seems the owner had just plugged the gas line by inserting a bolt and that allowed a slight drip but not enough to create a gas odor. Sheepishly, he told the mechanic, "I wish I could blame that on you." A Key Problem One mechanic got a call about when a houseboat's engines wouldn't start. When he made a service call to the boat, he watched the owner fire up the port engine with no problem and then put the starboard control in warm-up position. But that is when the owner turned the same key he used for the port engine to try and start the starboard side. When the correct key was turned, the problem was solved. On Or Off? Another non-working engine story involves an owner of a luxury houseboat who called in to report both his engines had lost power. The mechanic went out to assist him and was amazed to find both drive units were knocked off. The presenting problem in this loss-of-power story is that one engine of an owner's boat would shut down when he was barely out of the marina. The first step was to go over the op- erating instructions with him again. When the problem per- sisted, he was asked to show how he went through his start- ing procedures. What was discovered was that he was turning on his port gas line but then turning off the starboard line. He had the general idea of what to do but somehow confused on and off. Deal Or No Deal? Wanting a flybridge for his boat, but not wanting to pay a lot for the work, one boater found someone who gave him a "great deal" on installing one. He was proudly showing off this new flybridge when someone walked into the cabin and noticed a circular arc of screws protruding two inches from his ceiling. W hen boaters start griping about this or that, it doesn't take long before the conversa- tion turns to boat mechanics and technicians. These sessions can easily get out of hand as each boater tells his tale of woe about how much he was charged or how poor the service was. They even grumble about the failure of a mechanic to fix what he should have, even though it wasn't in the work order and the customer hadn't authorized the work. But turnabout is fair play, so in an effort to provide some balance and fairness, we asked some mechanics and service technicians to tell us stories about silly, rude or not-so-smart things customers have done. We promised that no names, dates, or places would be used in order to protect both the story providers and the identification of the guilty parties. Here are just a few: