Alright .. take this for what it is worth....

First of all I have never heard of or dealt with Sterndrive Inc so this may not be their case at all.

In my line of work I have examined a lot of small businesses and this seems indicative of a cash flow crunch. Company A starts running out of cash so they start selling parts and taking payment up front to cover their short term bills. They use the money you paid today to pay the bills that were due a month ago. Of course this becomes an issue when they run out of money to buy your parts.

It is surprising how long companies can survive running on this model of using money for today's orders to pay for last weeks orders. No sane business, no matter how $h!tty wants to piss you off. It is a by=product of them having their hands tied from a lack of resources.

I'd follow the advice of others in this thread and call your CC company sooner rather than later. Chances are you are not the only one with a problem and the longer you wait the smaller your chances of getting your $$ back before Sterndrive goes belly up.

I hope this is not the case, but I have seen dozens of small businesses fail this way. Best to stay uninvolved.

Good luck

What was your problem with Keith? He is as stand up as they come

I agree with you JC, hes always been standup to me!

JC I think that he was making light of what was being said in another thread a long time ago. If you look at when this thread was started it was back in early March.

Jon

Was Thinking Of Buying A Drive From Him Anybody Have Any Good Dealings With Lane???????? Or Is He A Total Jerk???????

Believe it or not, I got a great deal from Lane at Victory Marine 3 years ago. I'm not defending his actions in your case though. I bought twin 350 MPI's and got them on time and working perfectly. Maybe it helped when I told him that the shipping address of Lodi, NJ was next to Ba-Da-Bing's and if he screwed me to watch out for 3 big guys walking into his place in softball uniforms. (with bats) He got all nervous and said "No these are good motors I'm sending you!" So I just said, "OK, but don't say I didn't warn you"

I have 200 hours on those baby's now and they purr like kittins. And those are Charlie hours (WFO)

I would use Victory Marine again or better yet Derraberry.

I think thats what Nauti By Nature meant in his post

I Hope I am wrong but Here is interesting development that everyone needs to be aware of. Sterndrive Inc has dropped out of sight after ripping off at least 3 people that I know of. NOW there is a new OSO advertiser called Big Guns Marine which has the same MO as Sterndrive Inc and is in the same area. Their ads and website the same look. The big guns marine website domain was even registered on June 1st of this year. I called friend in Galveston which is near there and he tracked them down to a small officepark with no warehouse. There is also another business sharing the same space called ALLIEDINDUSTRIALSALES.COM.
Be careful you guys!.