RickB wrote:
If the buyer's surveyor decides to rewrite the rulebook there is no reason for you to fear your insurance company. If the buyer gets a snit about an item described by an incompetent surveyor as not meeting some "standard" then simply ask the buyer to have his "surveyor" show him the rule that your boat does not meet. It really is that simple. Your insurance company is not involved in a third party survey report, and you don't have to jump through home made hoops to satisfy a non existent "requirement." If your surveyor tells you that your boat doesn't meet some standard, simply ask him to show you that standard. If the guy can't, then terminate the survey and pay him for the time he has spent. You don't need to deal with incompetent surveyors. If you somehow miss something that makes it to your insurance company and you know that the survey is wrong, (and as an owner you should either know or know where to find out) point that out in writing and reference the standards that actually apply. You might think this is "tilting at windmills" and maybe you have thousands to throw away on incompetent surveyors makiing up rules that your insurance company blindly follows, but I don't think having some idiot throw my money away is not worth bothering with. As a boat owner who pays the bills, you have a right to getting what you pay for from surveyors and contractors. You wouldn't let a yard waste your money on the wrong parts or other products, would you? Why so cavalier about a so called surveyor sticking it up your stern? And for Heaven's sake, don't perpetuate the myths by posting warnings about stuff like that. After a while people begin to believe it is true ... even surveyors.
*Rick, you missed the point entirely. It's not YOUR surveyor. You can't fire the BUYERS surveyor. The BUYER decides who to believe. Is he going to jump thru hoops to question HIS expert because YOU said they're wrong? Not in this lifetime.*
It's not YOUR insurance company. It's the BUYERS insurance company. You don't have the option to prove to HIS insurance company that*HIS expert, and theirs by proxy,*is wrong.
Let's use an example. You've had your boat on the market for 2 years now. The market is soft. The prices are already lower than you ever thought they would be. You finally got a buyer that made an offer you could live with. It wasn't a full price offer, but you've been paying moorage, maintenance and service on the boat for 2 years that it's been for sale. His surveyor came back and said your battery wire wasn't up to snuff. He said it needed to be marine wire.
Your buyer is buying his first boat. He doesn't know the difference between marine wire and marine corps. His surveyor, the*non-biased expert which his broker, another boat expert,*recommended, said it was a problem and that he could be stranded somewhere in his new boat because the wire had corroded inside where it couldn't be seen, and now his engines won't start. He's told that a marine service call to have a mechanic come out and get his boat started, or to be towed back home could be in the thousands of dollars if this isn't fixed correctly. The experts have already*told the buyer that*they can't always tell everything about a boat, and that they aren't responsible if they missed anything or misstated anything about the boat, it's written right in the survey.
The buyer says he believes his two experts whom he is paying for their opinions.*Is he really going to believe you, because you brought out some book he's never heard of, pointed to a page with some sort of standard that he doesn't understand*and as the seller whom he instinctively distrusts, just because you're the seller, are telling him his experts are wrong?
Are you going to walk away from the $150,000 sale or are you going to give the buyer $1,000 to rewire the batteries that you saved $150 on by buying non-tinned wire?
It's not about right or wrong. It's not about telling that incompetant surveyor where to go. It's all about what actually happens in the real world with real surveyors and real buyers. There are lots of boats for sale and the broker makes just as much money from selling another boat as he makes from selling yours. He's probably going to take the buyer back to another boat they already looked at and convince him to make an offer on it.
The surveyor makes twice as much money when the buyer drops your boat and looks at another. He gets another complete survey job.
Can anyone point to a spot that they can't believe this scenario? Do you really think that because you can prove them wrong that you'll get a chance to? Are you willing to bet the cost of another months mortgage, moorage and maintenance on the $150 you saved?
Now, it's your boat, you can certainly do as you like. I'm just pointing out a possible outcome of saving money now and paying it back with gangster vigorish later.
ken
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