Polux - the only response I ever received to the question "why?" was that the delay is due to more orders than anticipated and a lack of qualified factory employees.
Look at it this way, though. For a factory which puts out on average, one boat per working day (250 per year), to be delayed 2-3 months is an enormous backlog, which if it existed when I first ordered my boat, should have been conveyed to me when I was first told when to expect mine to be delivered. I was given no such
advice.
Rarest Iowa - I do not at all see your question as troll; it is very legitimate. After all, what is there to be angry about?
Here's what I am angry about. Several days before my first scheduled
delivery day, I was told by my dealer I needed to be ready to wire
money to the dealer's account. I set up everything to do so, including closing on a boat loan and liquidating certain investments, as I had planned to do. I also signed my slip
lease.
The day before my boat was to be shipped from the factory, and
the day before I was ready to make the wire transfer to assume
ownership, the factory informed the dealer the boat would not arrive for another 5 weeks.
Four weeks after the first
delivery date and a week before my new delivery date, I asked the dealer to call the factory (because he had not heard from them in the interim) and find out if my boat was going to be delivered. Three days later and 4 days before the second delivery date, the factory informs the dealer the boat is not going to be delivered for another 4-6 weeks.
So my new delivery date is mid-June. I have been paying interest on a boat loan I did not need to secure for another two months, minimum. I have been paying slip
fees on a slip I did not need to secure for another two months, minimum. In my view, the lack of the factory's transparency and communication about the delays has cost me real dollars. While the costs are certainly small next to the cost of a
new boat, they are real, and they could have been readily avoided had the factory be forthright with early communication to the dealer about delays in manufacturing.
Had the factory kept me well informed of the delays, I might have been upset, but I agree with you, I probably had no right to be "angry". After all, if I had known what was going on, I would have been more appreciative of their struggles to balance schedule delays with a quality product. But, I also would not have been out several thousand dollars (and counting), which could have been totally avoided.
I don't know what to expect when the dealer calls the factory next week to see if a mid-June delivery date is still good. But based upon Beneteau's track
record to date, and another buyer's being told last Saturday, that their boat was going to be another 4-6 weeks out (their 3rd delay), I don't have a great deal of hope.
So yes, I do strongly advise folks
purchasing a Beneteau, to find out what's going on with Beneteau manufacturing. While I have been told it is the large number of orders they have received and the lack of qualified personnel to build boats, 2-3 month delays on a factory line putting out 250 boats a year has to be bad for Beneteau's cash flow, and certainly something I would have expected Beneteau to figure out how to resolve more quickly than the 2-3 months it has apparently already taken them to resolve.
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