offshoredrillin

Well now the story will come out in detail; it’s taken a while to get to this point as I tried to remedy it over the summer when I picked up the boat. Sorry for the long read but it’s important to the timeline to be accurate...

I took my 2000 42 Cigarette Tiger to Richys Custom Paint in Miami in October of 2016 for an all over paint job, the paint and gel were 16 years old and it was time for an upgrade and refresh. I had found a paint job that I fell in love with and one of my best friends Bill Forenski had just had some work done by Richy and Janet and it was good, there were some issues he found later but it was passable and he really liked Richy so I set up a time to get my boat down to him. They knew 100% that the boat needed gel repairs, the initial est. for the paint job I wanted (which he didn’t do)was 30k and the estimate for the repairs was 8k, I said ok, and took the boat down, I gave him 5k cash to get started. I stayed for the next day and introduced them to a friend( known next as rigger) that was going to de-rig the boat and rewire all the new gauges and new gps (yet Richy tells people I had no money ,my rigging bill was over 13k not including the cost of the gauges and new GPS which was another 3K total, I’ll keep coming back to this and you’ll see why) While the boat was down there I had my rigger take the swim platform, the hatch, all the interior out and start to remove all the hardware from the boat as I didn’t want it just taped around. I had the cockpit upholstery and sun pad brought back to MD, which I paid another friend to bring it up, for one of the best upholstery shops on the east coast at a cost of 10K (yet I have no money according to Richy)So I have already committed to 61k in upgrades, after just having new gas tanks at 15k the summer before and upgrades to motors and drives of 105k right before the gas tanks (see the pattern). His paint job was supposed to be the finishing touch on the boat, the only thing left to do was the cabin, and I put that off for last (more allotted money, hmmm)

So Richy and Janet jump right on my boat with their shared screwdriver, I say this in jest, but they literally had no tools, as his birthday was coming up, I took it upon myself to go to Ace Hardware and buy him a tool set for about 200 bucks as well as sets of pliers (yet I have no money, but the best shop in the world has no basic hand tools, warning sign #1) I stayed in a hotel that night (that’s what broke people do) and met them back at the shop and all was set for the process. I started to get texts from my rigger about him going to Richy and Janets shop as agreed and they were no shows, so he wasted time out of his day that I paid for for them to act unprofessional, they certainly had plenty to do, why weren’t they doing it? I was being sent pics of the process and I knew it was time consuming and I was assured by Richy that the glass work was going to be done by Renegade I even have a text that says “I’m not going to learn glass work at your expense” which is very foretelling as that is exactly what happened. Richy was also doing boats for Renegade and being in business myself, I understand about projects and cash flow, so I had no objections to him doing those jobs as I had allotted plenty of time to have it back by memorial weekend which was the agreed time. Jump to January as my friend Bill is very good friends with the Geico team, they needed a new paint job on their top gun and another (blue top gun needed to be done, I was asked by richy if they could bring them in while mine was out to be repaired by Renegade I was asked if he could transport my boat to them with his hauler I said yes as long as he is insured, I was assured he was (keep in mind about that time I found out that Richy had no insurance on his shop yet had hundreds of thousands of dollars in high performance boats in it, best boat shop in the world right?)

So my boat leaves Richys shop, I assume to get the prep work done, well it goes to Dania beach Marina where it sits for 3 months uncovered and dirt and grime are getting all over the new 2500.00 Lonseal floor I had put in, not to mention the cabin was left open and 3 months of dust and grime settle in there. The boat sits and sits and another friend sends me pics of it sitting there half primed and all the tape on the drives and gimbles just permeating in the Florida sun, anyone that has left tape on anything for too long knows where this leads.While my boat is sitting, I’m still getting requests for payments as Richy and Janet can’t afford to buy paint for the other jobs and their suppliers cut them off, I was also told he had a friend send him 5k to help as well, so I sent some more to him. I go to make the deposit and I get a message that they are having issues with the bank (hmm) that I should send a check instead of making a deposit. Keep in mind during this whole time, its all buddy buddy, you’re the best pal, anything you want my friend etc. Bill even took him on a poker run and Janet and Richy were asking me for business advice and how to charge and make profit and saying they wanted to run their business like I run mine…So I start to question when my boat is going to get started and I get a call about the owner of the blue top gun is a liar, a horrible person, how dare he expect after paying an agreed to sum that he would want it to be right, he even lost a hauler to get the boat back to his home at LOTO (lake of the Ozarks) basically everything that Richy as said about me on the net, he has said about every owner of a boat that he screwed up and He was also telling me that Geico was trying to screw him as well (see that pattern, it’s always the clients fault)they haven’t touched my boat in months, yet still ask for money, I 100% lived up to every financial obligation and even went above.
So fast forward to March, Richy gets my boat and commences to lay out the graphics, I can tell right away that it’s not what I want, but I gave him artistic freedom so I let him run with it, the final result was a design I could live with, just the quality of the end product is horrible. So about this time, I wasn’t sending money as it was down to the last payments and I wasn’t going to prepay and my buddy Bills boat gets there, this is late April and June, and my boat has been progressing slowly as they kept bringing in other work and letting my boat sit. Bill kept telling them that I wanted my boat done, yet they kept telling him that they had cleared it with me and it was ok that they were behind. Bill and I let it ride that they didn’t know that he and I talk numerous times a day and week, that’s when it all started to come together, his stories to me and his stories to Bill were different. I got an updated bill on May 15th actually the first written invoice since taking my boat there taking the original estimate from 38k to 44,200 dollars. Keep in mind there was a 5500 line charge for subcontract labor and deck repairs of 3150.00, yet agreed to subs actually touched my boat… Where did that money go?

My boat finally got cleared and left for rigging on june 19th… Remember the deadline was for me to be on the water by memorial weekend and I still had an appt to get the bottom blueprinted in 2017 (that’s something else us broke guys do, spend 7500 on the bottom of the boat) About that time they were moving and needed money, so they were calling both Bill and I and the work that was being done was shoddy at best. I was getting harassed for the last payment, yet the gauge panels and final buff weren’t even done on the boat. While at the riggers, they were working on it religiously to get it done, and were putting the lifeline on the deck, Richy shows up and miraculously a scratch appears on the starboard bow like someone dragged a key down it, the rigger and the helper swore it wasn’t there before he showed up, the rigger who is a 10 year friend starts freaking and says we “have to call Rob” Richy says no, don’t tell him, just pay me to fix it..(remember where they were calling around like crazy because they needed money to move) why else would someone scratch a paint job they just finished unless to extort money, the marina manager confronted Richy and from the people that were there “he wouldn’t look anyone in the eye” and the scratch got fixed (horribly I might add) I was livid, at that point I had no idea the paint was as horrible as it was. At this point im getting texts every day and being told the boat isnt leaving unless they get paid, yet the dash panels weren’t even at the riggers to have the gauges installed, the boat would eventually come back with the wiring half done and ****ty paint and raw metal edges showing on the dash edges. Being as he had scratched the boat once, I was worried that he would drag something down the side. I told both of them that I was planning to come down to get it but needed to know exactly when everything would be done as I can’t just up and leave my business in MD and drive straight through to Miami and back, they missed the proposed date so I made arrangements to have the boat towed to South of the border where I met the driver and bought it home on July 22nd at that point I started to look the boat over and got more and more pissed, disappointed, angry, you name it.

offshoredrillin

I let Richy know I wasn’t happy, I flew the rigger up here to finish the rigging and try to salvage the summer on August 4th, I had another friend of mine John who owns a body shop and does all my personal paint work come over and we started going around the boat looking at the flaws and bubbles and the peeling paint on the hatch, yep, just a few weeks and it was already peeling, not to mention the paint all over brand new Imco Gimbles with less than 20 hours on them, there were areas that didn’t even have paint and areas on the deck with little to no clear. At that point I started to text Richy and let him know that he needed to send me touch up as I wasn’t sending the boat back down, he knew what he did and was remorseful, but the work on this boat is nearly criminal, the lines around the vents should be smooth and flowing, they have corners, the edges of the hatch are rough and he painted over chipping gel that was supposed to be fixed, He told me Harold From Graphicworx did the long boarding on the boat and hatch, now in a recent post he says someone else did it. He did add a new rub rail, supposedly guys from cigarette did that and it was done right for 800.00, I wouldn’t allow him to pay for it and it was included in the final payment of 5800.00 before I had the boat picked up, now he says the guys from Renegade did it, one lie after another and zero accountability for the horrible paint work and the fact that its going to cost me another 46K to have it done right, I had Andy from MD Offshore and Chris Dilling come out to the house to inspect it and thats who I am using to sand this mess off and redo it back to the way it should have been..when Richy and Janet told me with what was done to my boat they normally charge 60k for.

Well I didn’t lose my temper and he couldn’t believe it, he says I threatened him, but I have texts that say why won’t you yell or scream at me? I said I’m not like that and by being that way would give you justification for not wanting to resolve this.. I told him I wanted 22k of the 40K that I paid back, I was willing to walk away from 18k, he said he did a good job and he can’t afford that, I told him that was unacceptable, I wanted 500 a month back to make it easy for me, he said only if I didn’t go public. After 4 months of no payments I texted him and said deal is off.. I finally got a check I still have it I won’t cash it… I’m sure there will be questions but this timeline is pretty much how my 2017 was spent, not enjoying the one thing I love and a hack painter and his wife telling me it was junk while they made off with 40k, I guess as all this is coming out the 22k would have been easier. I’m fortunate in my life, my hard work and good business sense as well as brutal honesty has given me more than I ever could have imagined.yea it sucks losing that money, but in the big picture my life hasn’t changed… Karma is indeed a ***** and Richy and Janet can call me Karma…

cheech

Is this available in Audiobook??

SB

iTrader: (1)

Junk

offshoredrillin

more pics of the mess

Padraig

That sucks!
Sorry for what he did to a beautiful boat the money lost and most of all the lost boating.

Padraig

Indy

Gee, that's sad, I remember when you were embarking on the upgrades. You didn't make a big deal out of it but I was thinking how nice it was to see someone who loved his boat/hobby treating it the way I'd have loved to treat my PP. Money isn't easy to come by (for some of us anyway) and you really want every nickel to be well spent. I treat my construction business like you do your business it seems, sad to see others don't have the same set of standards.

sprsptr

As I wrote a few weeks ago, your attitude is remarkable! The debacle you have endured is gut wrenching. I had a similar but much less intense situation with my Tiger a couple of years ago. I was promised a finish date that was exceeded by three months and cost me the summer of 2016. A lot of promises made, and very few fulfilled with a contractor who had a great reputation from the locals. It seems that when you are a thousand miles away from an unscrupulous operator, they take great advantage. I have come to realize that with some diligent research and perseverance, a local business can often be utilized. I will never again deal with anyone more than a couple of hundred miles away. I want to be able to drop by randomly, rather than flying in for an orchestrated presentation! Keep the faith Brother, the end result will be worth it. You and I both know what an iconic craft a straight bottom Tiger is.

offshoredrillin

read it aloud and add a redneck twang, it will be like I'm there

Jupiter Sunsation

Story sucks Rob. Two things I find crazy:
1. You didn't lose your temper
2. You didn't cash the check!

I would have done both......

I would say this thread just buried Richy's Custom paint. Ironically he has tons of pics of your boat and Bill's on his facebook page (like he is proud of the work).

Hopefully you get the boat fixed right and back on the water soon!