Yes
@tdonoughue, it can be a full time job working with incompetent dealerships in order to get warranty work done, and lucky for me when I bought my boat in 2015, I did not have a full time job to compete with the time required to get the warranty items fixed.
I'll only rehash for the sake of making others feel better, but I have to say that after a year and a half of non-stop pushing to get the warranty items fixed, I haven't had to get anything fixed on it since. Knock on wood/fiberglass. I hate to paint all dealerships with the same brush, but I'm zero for two.
I originally bought my boat from a dealership in Waco TX because the Houston area dealerships were too greedy and non-responsive. I brought my boat back to Waco (2.5 hr tow) for the first service. They overfilled the oil in my engines (first day on the job for an ex-Seadoo mechanic), but luckily, I checked it before running the boat. There are a few things that I had to re-fix correctly, but the worst one was that one of my rear swim platform cup holders was not draining. They said that they fixed it, and before leaving the dealership, I poured water into the cup holder to see if it was fixed, and it wasn't. So, I showed the service rep who proceeded to "fix" it by jamming a screw driver into the drain hole to "unplug" it. When I got home, I poured water into the cup holder and found that it was draining into the bilge. Root cause was a pinched drain hose, that ended up getting disconnected when the service rep jammed the screw driver into it. So, I fixed it myself.
From there, it was on to my local dealership in Conroe TX. Everything, yes I mean everything, that they "fixed" was never fixed right the first time and took 2 to 5 visits to get them to do it properly. A few times, I just gave up and fixed it myself. I had a leaky boat for a year and a half. Both dealerships that I worked with said "They all leak", but I could not accept that and things eventually got fixed. Since then, my boat has not leaked in 4 years. Not a drop comes out when I pull the bilge plug after a day on the water... and I have to say that because of how things started out with the many leaks in the boat, every time that I pull the plug and nothing comes out... it's kind of a celebration. During one visit, the dealership towed my boat down the highway to take it to the lake for a water test. They towed it with the bimini top deployed and wrecked the top/frame, but they replaced it at Yamaha's expense under warranty.
It's not just Yamaha dealerships though. When I had some warranty work done to my trailer to replace/retrofit the fenders and fender brackets, the Shorelandr-approved dealer just north of Calgary did not do the job correctly. When I went to pick my trailer up after the work was done, as a habit, I checked to see if it was done correctly. As part of the job, they were supposed to replace the original fender brackets with redesigned/beefier ones. Only one side had the new brackets. I asked them if they had any leftover parts from the job and I got a deer in headlights look back, and no answer, so I cut to the point and told them that they only did one side. The answer that I got was "Only one side had a cracked bracket. The other side is fine." So, I explained to them why they needed to do both sides.
So, there's a bit of a silver lining to the whole thing. My boat is great and has been for 4 years, but that's not the silver lining. When I took delivery of my new boat, I had documented that some of the seat cushions had blemishes on them (kinda looked like spider crap) that would not clean off. The Waco dealership told me that they'd check with Yamaha to see if they'd do anything. Well, after a few months of boating, the spots bleached out from the sun. I had no interest in dealing with the Waco dealership ever again, and then about a year and a half later, I get a call from the Waco dealership... "Are you going to pick up your seats?" So, I have a new-in-box captains chair, and a couple new-in-box seat cushions for the cockpit.
There's more to tell, but 'll finish with this last item. When I bought my boat, I had them throw in a flare kit, the kind that comes in a nice case and costs over $100. Well, it turned out that all of the flares in the kit were expired when I took delivery of my boat. The Waco dealership would not replace it nor give me replacement flares that were not expired. Not big bucks, but just wrong.
As they say, misery loves company, so I hope that this post makes many of my fellow jet boaters feel better.
