Anyone else receive a damaged UL-1?

[VKGT]

Just a little update.... The Hobby Shop that I purchased this from has been no help at all. They steered me in the direction of Lisa or Diane at Great Planes which only forwarded my call to Hobby Services. Hobby Services advised me to ship the UL-1 to them (on my dime) and they would determine if it is a warranty item or not and then ship a new one to me if they think the damage is covered. So right now, here we are a month later and I still don't have a functional UL-1.

No thanks to the Hobby Shop, they haven't even reimbursed me for shipping.

[VKGT]

My take on this particular situation. The Ebay seller received a damaged boat and rather than go through the lengthy process of a claim with the carrier he/she repacked the damaged boat in a another original box with no visible damage. That company would not be OSE but as you state a hobby shop or ? The reason I say this is, there is a lot of pressure sensitive tape on the shipping box.

Douggie

FWIW, the eBay seller in question here is a supposedly "reputable" Hobby Shop on the west coast. My frustration is their "hands off" approach to helping me get a new boat and pointing the finger at the distributer.

[Jeff Wohlt]

So are these not packed well? Do they not have a molded area of foam so the boat does not bang around?

You don't break inside areas when they are struck. Your packing should tell it all if the sponson tips smacked the end of the box etc.

Seems to be plenty of these is all I was saying...packing may be the issue.

[skibo2]

So are these not packed well? Do they not have a molded area of foam so the boat does not bang around?

You don't break inside areas when they are struck. Your packing should tell it all if the sponson tips smacked the end of the box etc.

Seems to be plenty of these is all I was saying...packing may be the issue.

I spent 26 years as Traffic Manager for a major international manufacturing company and my job was all aspects of transportation and packaging of our products. Is the packaging for the UL-1 adaquate? Yes, but it could be better to prevent transportation damage. However, I believe that much of the damage has happened at the manufacturing plant even before packaging and was the old cover up routine and get it out the door. I know that my first UL-1 happened that way for sure. If you look back in my posts you will see a post from me about damage around the turn fin. Well, when I removed the turn fin to check the extent of the damage I discovered a piece of the fiberglass was missing and the factory had put in some kind of filler and had repainted the area and replaced the turn fin over the repair. The boat had also been dropped on the tip of the sponson and a piece was broken out there as well and the same thing, filler and repaint. Now no transportation company did that repair that for sure happened at the manufacturer. Aquacraft has since replaced that boat to me. My second boat came with a hole in the box that was caused by transportation but there was NO damage to the boat. Transportation should only amount to about 1 to 2% of damage to a product. But from what I am hearing from many owners is that the figure is a whole lot higher than that. I hate to say this but the manufacturing facility is in a country that seems to be having a major quality control issue and has been accused many times of not following specs. Hopefully, those companies will learn that to compete in the world market they have to produce a qauality product.

Just my two cents worth on the situation.

[VKGT]

It's just a shame that these things are having problems and showing up damaged. I bought this UL-1 over a month ago and still don't have one... The batteries showed up from Hong Kong two weeks faster than it is taking to get a replacement. I talked to GP Hobby Services who didn't seem to want to speed up the process of just looking at my boat and sending a new one out even though they had the damn thing for at least 2 days.

Supposedly a new one from Great Planes is on the way...we'll see I guess

[Ub Hauled]

if it's coming from Great Planes then you should be able to track it... ask for a tracking number.

[VKGT]

Got a tracking number...hope this finally works out soon

[sailr]

I absolutely refuse to let UPS touch anything! FedEx ground has been really good and are much faster than UPS at a much lower cost.

USPS has been fairly good with their handling but their costs have shot through the roof for anything of size. Fedex is about 1/4th the cost of the post office!