Feb 02 2009
North Fork Outdoors and Dave Scadden
I’m becoming pretty disappointed at the customer service from North Fork Outdoors. The frame component with the crushed wheel mount was never replaced, and all 3 pontoon boat frames have major issues with the powder coat separating from the aluminum. Something is definitely not right.
I have contacted them – most recently via email, and the response was to phone later and talk to Dave. Sorry, but having an email record is kind of nice from my perspective. Waited all of last week for a response, and received none – so today I phoned them – twice, both times an answering machine.
If someone were to ask me for a product recommendation today, I certainly wouldn’t be recommending a Scadden product – purely based on customer service. It’s too bad, as the pontoon boats are nice (despite the powder coating and shipping damage).
4 responses so far
4 Responses to “North Fork Outdoors and Dave Scadden”
Any satisfaction from North Fork yet on your concerns? Am considering the Avenger XX but concerned about service. May go with Outcast or Cabelas for a conventional pontoon for two people.
After repeated calls and emails, one of my friends was able to finally discuss the problems, and it looks like we’re finally getting some satisfactory resolution. We shipped the affected frame components down to North Fork Outdoors a couple weeks ago – hopefully we will get them back (along with the original damaged component on my frame) in a couple weeks from now. Dave agreed to cover the cost for us to ship the items back to him, and is covering the cost to ship them back to us.
Dave explained that the frame components we received had been coated by a previous company that he had outsourced the work to. He’s had nothing but problems with them, and last year, shortly after we bought our boats, changed powder coaters – with substantially improved quality of work.
I think part of our problem in contacting Dave was the time of year – the early part of the year is definitely a busy one for him, doing a lot of travelling to shows etc. He is a very nice person, and easy to talk to, and very service oriented, once you get hold of him! As far as the boats themselves are concerned, I really don’t think that you can get a better craft… I’ll post back once we get the frames returned! Cheers
The saga continues – this week we finally got our frames back – well, almost.
First, they didn’t keep track of the pieces, so we actually ended up getting brand new frame components. However, they were missing the main right frame of one of the pontoon boats!
So, we leave on our big trip of the year next Thursday – hopefully Mr. Scadden can get the missing piece up here by then! We’ll soon find out how fast UPS Expedited can be…
Well, today they finally provided a tracking number, and it turns out that shipped the missing part up via regular UPS parcel service, not the expedited service that Dave Scadden told us he would use. Now one of the guys is without a complete pontoon boat for the trip that we head out on in a couple days.
Based on the overall quality of after sales service, I would strongly recommend steering clear of North Fork Outdoors. The premium prices for Dave Scadden’s pontoon boats does not ensure a better quality product, or better service.