Hi all,
I made a forum account especially to warn everyone about Highfields 250 rollup model
dinghy.
I have a very bad experience with this
dinghy and have received almost no understanding and customer
service from Highfield afterwards.
Sorry for a long story but I want to get the facts out.
I bought a Highfield mix roll up 250 in February in
Guadeloupe for a staggering 2300€, but hey, everything is expensive in the Carib and I thought
buying a well known brand like Highfield would assure a good buy which would last for many years.
Unfortunately after two months (!) there were 3 major problems with the 250 roll up dinghy:
1. the wooden floor boards
lost the
paint and were delaminating.
2. The front floorboard damaged the bottom of the
boat because of the sharp edge and lack of an
inflatable keel.
3. There is no place to put the
rope, just one sloppy handle in the middle which is not designed to hold the
rope and therefore is damaged when the dinghy is next to the
boat while at
anchor.
The shop in
Guadeloupe, uship, recognized my problems and confirmed this is a bad design and they will not continue selling this model after seeing my issues.
The worst part is I tried to get this very clear warranty case sorted out with Highfield since may. It is now August (!!) and after many phonecalls and emails from my side the factory comes up with the solution to send me an
inflatable floor. This fixes only one out of three problems (the damaged floorboards). In my view the dinghy is badly designed and put on the market without proper testing. Now Highfield interprets customer "service" as me calling them all the time and comes with a solution which is no solution. I can't believe Highfield puts it's name on the line like this and makes its customers pay for product testing. I still hope this is all one big misunderstanding and someone from customer
service helps me sort this mess out. But I can't
advice you otherwise: don't buy the highfield roll up 250 model!!
I will put pictures online soon.