Far East Boats China

Buyer’s Nationality:
United Kingdom

Seller:
Far East Boats

Seller Website:
www.fareastboats.com

Seller Address:
Room 209, Focus Business Centre, 2468 Gudai Rd, Minhang District, Shanghai, 201199, China

Initial contact with the supplier:
Direct Buy Website

Type of product(s) being purchased:
Sailing dinghies

Value of the Purchase Order when the incident occurred:
6,001 to 12,000 USD

Destination market of order in question:
US or Canada

Type of Complaint(s):
compromised intellectual property

Stage of relationship with the supplier at the time of the incident:
Initial Order

User Experience:
We are Koh Phangan Free Youth Sailing, a sailing project that has been established to give poor Thai children the opportunity to learn to sail. We ordered sailing boats from Far East Boats as they had supplied events with boats within China, and we could not find any adverse publicity about the company. The first consignment of boats arrived and the two 420’s where not sailed for a few months.

On the first sail the boats both leaked into the buoyancy tanks and one of the boats was of very bad quality. They sent there production manager to meet me and at the time I had a British Aerospace composite engineer staying with me. We met with the guy and pointed all the problems out. Eventually they decided to give me another hull Free of Charge.

At this time the owner Mrs Delmor Du contacted me telling me the new hull would be far superior to the old one. So on this basis we ordered another hull. We were still not happy as both hulls leaked badly and both boats were over minimum weight. It took nearly one year to get them to deliver the FOC hull and the new one I bought.

When they arrived I was only there for a short time as I was being admitted to hospital with dengue fever. When out of hospital I inspected the boats and both had major gel coat discoloration. We informed Far East Boats in December 2015 and have been arguing ever since. The boats had not been sailed until the Koh Samui regatta in May.

But before this we had torrential rain one night and water was in the boats. This water somehow got into the front buoyancy tanks. When the boats were sailed at Samui they leaked. The first two boats have been only sailed 25 times and the new ones twice. All four hulls have a major problem with the deck to hull joint and leak water. The build quality is not very good, all four boats are overweight, the gel coat discolouration on the two newer boats is very bad and the boats look a mess.

The reality is that all four hulls are not fit for the purpose they were bought for , and that is racing. These must be the worst International 420 hulls that have ever been manufactured any where in the World. For the last 2 months the owner has never replied to any emails. The boats are here for any inspection.

We want Far East Boats to return our money for these hulls. The whole episode has had an effect on KPYS as we have hardly used the hulls because of this dispute.

User Recommendations:
The owner of Far East Boats does not care at all. They are a big company and make many different boats . But they cannot build these International 420’s. This is unfortunately a company you cannot trust. Customer service non existent. Think twice before buying from them. We do this for free and they really do not care.