Re: Terrible Holiday With Black Prince

> Beats me why the hirer didn't notice the sound of the
> water pump cycling regularly for no reason.

They did - take a look at the e-mail trail here:

http://www.spagweb.com/magicspanner/hol_complaint/

By the time the e-mail was sent, they had correctly diagnosed a fresh
water leak - in fact they explicitly acknowledge that they knew that
was the problem on the Sunday.

What is quite clear (again, just read what they have posted here and at
the above link) is that, having diagnosed the problem, they also
believed that calling out an engineer would lead to a substantial
disruption to their planned schedule (they have said they did not
believe this would be a simple back-side fix, many feet of concealed
piping would need to be examined, etc.)

Accordingly, they decided to live with the wet carpet issue. Even after
they realised the problem was much worse than they initially though
(when the wet carpet escalated into an empty water tank and the stress
of the situation caused a member of the crew, to have a panic attack
and burst into tears), they still failed to request an engineer which,
to be blunt suggests a selfish streak on the part of the dominant
personalities amongst the crew. The Wednesday e-mail sent to BP appears
to have been designed to absolve the crew of responsibility for any
damage and/or to placate those crew members who were unhappy about the
situation. It clearly was _not_ intended to get an engineer out to the
boat, otherwise it would have said "this is making us miserable, send
an engineer ASAP".

The fact that the hirers knew what that the fresh water system was
leaking, knew the carpet was being wetted, but chose to continue to
operate the boat in that condition is where they clearly failed in
their duty of care to BP. I have no idea whether that made any material
difference to the water damage to the carpet - it's quite possible the
leak had existed for several days of the previous hire, for example.
But it appears to have been the reason that BP became hostile to the
hirers.

My position remains that the hirers have no right to complain that they
had to endure discomfort from the wet floor and inconvenience from
having to fill the water tank from the Sunday evening onwards - the
point that they knew the problem was continuing - even if they didn't
happen to know what was causing it, because they failed to request an
engineer to rectify the problem (as I have repeatedly pointed out, not
once did they ever say "please send an engineer"). They have every
right to complain about discomfort they endured on the Sunday (though
that does not seem to have been substantial).

If the hirers had called an engineer, they would have every right to
complain about the resulting disruption to their schedule if that
proved to be substantial (my personal experience has been that hire
companies are pretty good about offering vouchers, etc. if hirers lose
more than a couple of hours due to boat faults, but you do have to play
the game by their rules).

Maybe I am unique in the contributors to this thread, but I don't think
either side is 100% in the right. Both sides made bad decisions. That
said, if I were a hire boat operator, I would happily hire a boat out
to the OP and his friends, because I think they are intelligent people
who have actually learned a lesson from this experience and would not
repeat their mistakes. If I wanted to hire a boat, I would still
happily consider BP, because I believe that given a fair chance to fix
the problem early on in the hire they would have done so and, to be
frank, I don't think other hire fleets are any less likely to have
similar issues or be better at customer relations and I just factor all
that into my expectations.

Now if anyone here can point out where I am demonstrably materially
wrong, I'll be happy to modify my position. I just have the feeling
that many of those who are posting here have not read carefully through
the statements made by the crew of Holly and have failed to give fair
consideration to both sides of the argument.

--
Peter Headland

.

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