Victoria Marine Has had our boat in the shop for 7 months with continuous broken promises Victoria, Texas

    My husband took his boat to Victoria Marine around July 2012. It is now Februrary 25, 2013, and we still do not have the boat back. We have checked on the status several times, and the owner always promises when it will be ready or when he will have information about a part, etc., but he rarely ever calls us or keeps his promise. We wait a while and then check on it again.

    The last promise was over a month ago. My husband took a friend with him to pick up the boat to take it somewhere else. Apparently, the boat was in pieces. The owner apologized and then said he would have it ready in about two weeks. This would not be as big of an issue if this was an isolated incident. However, this type of response has been going on for months now. 

     His first excuse was that he was low on employees. Then he admitted that he put certain boats in front of my husbands. I was there the day this was said. He started to look up a part to give my husband a quote. He pulled out a catalog and spent about 5 minutes trying to locate the part.  

   After not finding the part for some time and cross referencing hard copy manuals, I made the comment to him that he needed a better system (I'm in information systems). You would have thought I called him the worst name in the book. I had to leave and sit in the car because of his attitude towards me. As I opened the door to leave, he accused me of being an Obama supporter. First, I am not. Second, there was no reason for that attitude from an owner to a customer.

    When we got there that same day to check on the boat, (around November 2012), the doors were locked, but it was the middle of a business day. After knocking and not finding anyone, we started to get into the car. A lady approached us to unlock the door. 

    She said she had been taking a walk and was watching in case someone came to the shop. (She was almost too late.) Then when we went in, she couldn't help us. She found our hard copy ticket but could not give us an update on the boat because it was not written down anywhere. We had to wait until the owner could come out. 

    This company is very unprofessional and inefficient. We got the talk about how wonderful they were while we were there. We got the talk about how other people aren't as good as them. We still haven't gotten our boat though.

    My husband is concerned that if we don't be nice to the owner, that the owner will do a sloppy job and charge us a lot of money. I'm concerned about the whole situation. We also have brand new supplies in the boat (live jackets, etc.). I don't even know if they are still in the boat at this point.

    I would appreciate any advice that someone has so we can get the type of service we should get or get our money for the boat and all the supplies in it.