I have never chartered with them or had a boat in their program but I have had dealings with them and yeah, I would never deal with the Moorings ever again.
I purchased a boat from them and the entire process was fraudulent. In all my years of
buying houses, cars, boats etc, I have never ever dealt with such a company which apparently has no hesitation in attempting to screw you.
When I purchased the boat and had a pre phase out
survey done, there were 66 items found and agreed upon to be fixed. When they advised me that the boat had finished the phase out, I arrived to find it had all been signed off as being completed yet they had done nothing other than fabricate phony documents.
It wasn't until I refused to release funds from escrow and threatened filing a complaint against their brokerage
license, that they started to take things seriously. In the end, everything was completed and a follow up
survey done to verify but only because I was there every day looking over them.
While I waited, they provided me with a 40 foot
Beneteau. Each night in the Moorings base, I awoke to a symphony of low voltage alarms as boats were just left with lights, nav
instruments and
refrigeration running and the
shore power was less than reliable. Each morning, the fleet had dead
batteries. The
broker commented that they replace
batteries every 6 months on average. No wonder. The inmates are running the asylum, so nothing is done about it. There is no oversight on anything. From a week of watching their
BVI operation, I quickly deduced that most of the damage done to boats is not done by
charter clients.
They have since shown that management team the door and have now been
sold, again.
As far as their "owner program" they can make it sound very enticing. You can buy a $400K boat with close to a $100K discount at the front end, put it in their fleet , pay nothing because the revenue pays the note and five years later you get the boat back and it will be worth $150K. Great, a nearly
new boat for less than half of retail! And there lies the devil in the detail. They tell you the boat will be worth $150K but do not guarantee it. YOU must guarantee the end value when you are making your financial calculations. You also have absolutely no say in how the boat is maintained while in their possession. So, BIG risk at the end of the
contract because at the end of the day, the boat is your problem, not theirs. I bought my boat from just such a client and I didn't pay anywhere close to what they were told their boat would fetch.
As an example, you and your buddy
purchase two identical boats in the program. At the end of the program, you have been told that your boats should be worth about $100K. You do the math and conclude it is a good deal. Now, sometime during the
contract, your boat runs aground on a reef. It is brought back to the base and surveyed. THEY conclude it can be fixed rather than written off. The entire
hull pan and grid is then ground down and reinforced during the
repair. It is arguably now stronger than it was when it was new. But guess what? That boat has just been depreciated substantially compared to your buddy's boat! There is now no way, it will be worth what you thought it would be at contract termination time.
You really must do your homework and I would imagine the contracts are designed more to protect them, rather than you.