What to do with Fine Design?

[JCAustralia]

Sorry to hear about your boat.

I'll share my experience about my short (and last) dealings with FDM.

I was going to buy 2 hulls from FDM and am glad I bought from OSE instead. Given the choice I would buy from OSE but I wanted a H&M hull and FDM seems to be the only US company selling them. The communication was pretty inconsistent in terms of response time..... Anyway we had agreed to a deal and I was ready to enter my credit card numbers for payment. But I had one last question.......

Having read mixed reviews about his business practices, especially long delivery times due to non-availability of stocks, I asked him about the stock availability. Since that email and several follow up emails afterwards I haven't heard from him........

Not trying to put FDM down but the situation was bizarre and I'm so glad I did not buy from him......

Good luck

JC

[Gary]

I to still have great dealings with Chris but the boat "WE" put togather was nowhere near as fast as he said it would be. No biggie.

[kevinlew211]

big boat, 15 mins at 60mph is impossible for single setup (at least for me), you beter have some prove for what he told you.

[H&MWill]

I myself have had good luck with Chris when I ordered parts a few years back and he built my first FE boat. His support was great. After his brother took over, I've heard almost nothing but bad things. Word of mouth has killed any future dealings for me. Did you talk to Chris or his brother? From what I understand, Chris is easier to deal with.

I have also had good experiences with Chris. I probably wont deal with him again after reading some of the posts on here. I work in the motorcycle industry and its the same way. Now we put everything in writing that these machines are made for racing and have NO warranty AT ALL. We have the customer sign it and this has saved so many headaches. Dont get me wrong if it is something I know we did I will take care of it. The bikes I am talking about and FE boats are close to the same. Very fast and very fragile if you dont know how to treat them. Like someone else said 2 sides to everything.

[chummer]

Nail the son of a bitch

Douggie

I just finished reading this thread and so far I like Douggie's reply best...



Others have implied it as well just not so bluntly...Well said Douggie.LOL.

[Jeff Wohlt]

Well if any of you have had any long phone conversations like I have in the past you can't help but get the feeling from him that this is no problem to build you this boat and sure it will do this and that. That is Chris, now what goes along with that is he used to be pretty good and close to his set ups.

Matt went to this purchase with NO knowledge of FE at all. I spoke with him and in no way does he want any more than what was promised.

He can easily get away beating gas set ups with this boat but it will need a little more either volts or getting the CG right and propping a bit more. Does anyone think he should go to 12S on this and not 10S?

Chris saw this as a BIG sale that could pay his mortgage another month and jumped on it.

Again, this kind of business has been tolerated way too long. He has shirked on motors and held money and products were either delivered as not the same or some even worse and got burned.

I know I will be checking my site and removing any link to this business.

Now I think Matt just needs some help getting this boat running again and that is what we are here for.

It is easy for a builder/business to just throw in the towel and say forget it I am not helping you anymore.

THis SOB did not even have a can cooler on the motor!! What kind of crap is that? So Matt may have cooked the motor runnning at over 200 degrees. I said to tell Steve Neu his deal with Chris and I am sure Steve would check the motor out for him at probably no charge!

Hang in there, Matt. Ask questions and make sure you always shoot a pic to show something. There are many here running NEU, CC and big hulls.

[graill]

Hate to see this kind of thing too. I have had my run ins with Chris fine in 03 and a couple in 05 after i retired. Just BBB him, make sure you have your ducks in a row, receipts, phone records and make sure you do >everything< in email as phone convos dont carry any weight uless they were recorded, which is illegal unless you like listening to birds and happen to get the phone convo by accident...........

People like this will generally not return emails (as he failed to do with me during those years i mentioned because they dont want things coming back to haunt them, like pissed off customers. His definition of in stock is 12 to 24 weeks. I learned the hardway until i found OSE.

since 06 i have used no one but OSE and a couple others (overseas), basically what Steve has reccomended.

[rockwerks]

Hate to see this kind of thing too. I have had my run ins with Chris fine in 03 and a couple in 05 after i retired. Just BBB him, make sure you have your ducks in a row, receipts, phone records and make sure you do >everything< in email as phone convos dont carry any weight uless they were recorded, which is illegal unless you like listening to birds and happen to get the phone convo by accident...........

People like this will generally not return emails (as he failed to do with me during those years i mentioned because they dont want things coming back to haunt them, like pissed off customers. His definition of in stock is 12 to 24 weeks. I learned the hardway until i found OSE.

since 06 i have used no one but OSE and a couple others (overseas), basically what Steve has reccomended.

Actually you are wrong, anyone can record all of their own conversations. ONly one person in the conversation needs to be privy to the recording for it to be legal. I ran into this in court years ago.

Like you I shop here and overseas if I cant get what I need from steven

[Bill-SOCAL]

How's this:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32586241/ns/business-retail

MSNBC got sucked in by his BS as well. Thing is this guy has a long history of screwing people. He gets by by screwing new people because everyone else knows to steer clear.

Try not to choke watching the poor "woe is me" video.

He got me early on. Ordered 4 packs from him, took 3 months to get them. Seems UPS "lost" them FOUR TIMES!!! Never got a tracking number, etc. Just lies. When I finally got the packs this S-O-B still had the Huevos to charge me the expedited shipping that I originally asked for!!!

[Bill-SOCAL]

Actually you are wrong, anyone can record all of their own conversations. ONly one person in the conversation needs to be privy to the recording for it to be legal. I ran into this in court years ago.

Not completely true. While in many states all that is needed is that you know you are recording, a one party concept, there are some states that require notification of all parties. Plus when going across state lines things get a bit murky:

http://www.callcorder.com/phone-recording-law-america.htm#State%20Laws%20%28Table%29

[domwilson]

How's this:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32586241/ns/business-retail

MSNBC got sucked in by his BS as well. Thing is this guy has a long history of screwing people. He gets by by screwing new people because everyone else knows to steer clear.

Try not to choke watching the poor "woe is me" video.

He got me early on. Ordered 4 packs from him, took 3 months to get them. Seems UPS "lost" them FOUR TIMES!!! Never got a tracking number, etc. Just lies. When I finally got the packs this S-O-B still had the Huevos to charge me the expedited shipping that I originally asked for!!!

Heh heh heh. Beat you to it. See post #29.
Anyways. I think I'm going blind. Which video is it?

[domwilson]

Not completely true. While in many states all that is needed is that you know you are recording, a one party concept, there are some states that require notification of all parties. Plus when going across state lines things get a bit murky:

http://www.callcorder.com/phone-reco...%20%28Table%29

This is true. It varies from state to state and also the type of case.

http://www.pimall.com/nais/n.recordlaw.html

[Bill-SOCAL]

Weird, the video that used to be linked is gone and replaced with the written story. Oh well. Point remains the same. They give this sob story about the poor hobby shop and never bothered to do a bit of research on them or their business. There is a reason so few do business with them. Especially in this economy nobody can afford to be jacked around when spending their hard earned money.

SOrry if this was mentioned before (post #29), I only scanned the posts.

[domwilson]

Weird, the video that used to be linked is gone and replaced with the written story. Oh well. Point remains the same. They give this sob story about the poor hobby shop and never bothered to do a bit of research on them or their business. There is a reason so few do business with them. Especially in this economy nobody can afford to be jacked around when spending their hard earned money.

SOrry if this was mentioned before (post #29), I only scanned the posts.

Good service and "word of mouth" has always been the best form of advertising.

[AndyKunz]

What I would try to do is get the quoted 15 min runtime and mid 60mph speeds documented in an email from Fine, then go to the lawyer, Least then you have evidence.

As much as I loathe the guy, I have to say he's way too smart to send you anything in writing. Why do you think he does it all by phone?

OTOH, in some situations oral contracts are stronger. Ask your lawyer.

Andy