FENN Shocking after sale service.

How long does it take to repair a broken FENN double, well more than 11 weeks and still counting the days? This is shocking after sale service. Seems once they have your money for a new ski and it is delivered you are nothing to them after that. How long have you been waiting for your FENN ski to be repaired.

You may need to supply some more details.
An unqualified accusation is just a poke in the dark.
Hell, we don't even know what country you are in.
A legitimate complaint clearly described will garner more respect.

If your ski is in 600 pieces, then it may take 11 weeks....

Join the club, I'm five weeks and still waiting for the call to say the repair has been started.
But mine isn't with Fenn.

But in my case the repair is not easy and all of the repairers in my region are busy.
So there are extenuating circumstances, and I suspect that there is more to your story than is posted.

So for the other readers as well as your repairer, give us the full rundown on the circumstances.

Sorry to see someone joining the forum just to give someone a serve, would be much more polite to come on, introduce yourself, then explain what your beef is.

Some forums only allow members to post a new topic once they have 10 comments posted under other threads to stop this ambushing style of posting. Poor form

I am from the KZN coast, was one of the many boats that broke in the Durban world cup race. Ski broke just in front of the front foot well where the carry strap is fastened barring about 20cm that was still intact. Ski will need to go back in mould as the stringer is also broken. Ski got sent directly to FENN factory a week after the world cup. I am in fact still waiting for the quote for the repair that needs to be done.

Whether one takes issue with the way the subject was originally raised or not, I for one would like to know about others' experiences with various manufacturers in terms of after sales service.

If you can't get your ski fixed by the manufacturer 3 months after you've taken the trouble to get it all the way to his factory, then potential buyers should know about it. It doesn't matter how good a ski is if you have to throw it away when it suffers what should be a repairable break.

Hi Nige,

Just wanted to give my input into the problem you are experiencing and the feedback you have requested on our experience.

I was fortunate enough to win a Fenn boat, so as you can expect, I am very greatful to them for sponsorship they offer to so many local and international events. There is no doubt that they make very good boats and are, therefore, very popular locally and abroad.

However, you have raised a very underated element to consider when purchasing a boat. After sales service is as important as the stability or speed of the boat in my view. Having said that, and also being from KZN (Durban), we are very fortunate to have Custom Kayaks on our doorstep. If you have not had any dealings with Mark Lewin or Mark Mulder, then you probably havent experienced after sales service at its best. The longest I have waited for my ski to be repaired is 2 or 3 days (i cant remember exactly), and he has done on-the-spot repairs for me (at no charge) on more than one occassion. Recently (3 weeks ago), a friend of mine broke his new ski in one of the local downwind events. The ski needed to be put back in the mould as well. The repairs were done within a week and he was back on the water the next weekend.

I also have a lot of friends that paddle Fenns, and as you know, it has been a particularly rough Winter here in Durban with a record number of boats being broken. For those who have decided to send their boats 10hrs south to East London, it has been a long wait for most - I have heard quite a few stories similar to yours. I do think that that Fenn would benefit from a local repair agent in Durban, but if that was financially viable, they probably would have done it already. Going by the number of Fenns on the water here, they are clearly the most popular brand, so I am surprised that this issue has not been addressed yet. For me, it just does not make sense to ship boats all the way to East London for repairs.

As for my prize, I have a vacuum glass layup which is already showing a number of stress fractures on the coating and seams. I do worry about how I will get it repaired when things do go wrong, and I cant help but think that I would be in a better position if it were a Custom Kayaks boat.

My bottom line is that after-sales needs to be considered when choosing a boat. I am just lucky enough to have one of each of brands, and can rest assured that at least one of them will always be serviced promtly, giving me more time on the water.

In my case, it is a major repair and it is easier for the repairer to do ten small easy jobs before mine and keep more people happy than drop everything and do mine.

I know I have done the same thing on my electronic repair bench.
Knock off all the easy ones, do anything small as it comes in the door and leave the harder stuff for last.

The worst that can happen is you have one annoyed customer, not 20.
And it usually doesn't add that much time to the harder repair anyways.

But this can only be done by carefully working and communicating with your customer.

If the communication is not there, then the system breaks down.
The customer then gets pissed and then bugs you trying to find out what the hell is going on.

People can understand the reality of repairs, but nobody can understand, and simply will not accept a lack of communication.

This will surely sink any enterprise in the long run.

Customers treated this way make as much noise as possible.
Potential customers hear three of these stories and you are screwed.

Any business that thinks that answering the phone to an irate customer 3 or 4 times, is easier than a simple courtesy call to let them know what is really happening, is setting themselves up for a big slap in the face from reality.......

Rightarmbad wrote:
If the communication is not there, then the system breaks down.
The customer then gets pissed and then bugs you trying to find out what the hell is going on.

Thats the crux of most greivences RAB. When customers aren't communicated to about what is happening with their item they are left to make their own summary about what is happening. Company XYZ don't give a crap because etc etc.

It's not always easy, especially for a small business with limited personnel to do all the things required. Most of the time the focus is on providing quality products or services and other areas such as backup service, or communicating issues with that backup service, may fall behind (not saying it has in the OP's case.

I am speaking from experience here because it was my poor communicaion to my clients that contributed to the downfall of my small business.

All it takes is a phone call to put most people at ease.

I have to say I have fortunately not broken my Fenn Double yet but I did enquire about alternatives to the totally useless rear foot plates on the XT and have not even had the courtesy of a reponse from the supplier in South Africa.

Moll wrote: totally useless rear foot plates on the XT

Please expand on what is the issue with the rear footplate, I am looking at doubles at the moment and trying to gather info on what ski is best.

AR_convert wrote:

Moll wrote: totally useless rear foot plates on the XT

Please expand on what is the issue with the rear footplate, I am looking at doubles at the moment and trying to gather info on what ski is best.

Let me start by stating I love this boat, yes it is not an Elite boat but I am not an Elite Paddler. It is the first boat I can sit in comfortably for a couple of hours with no issues. The stability can only be likened to an oil tanker. However the rear footplates are a soft plastic and eliminate any chance of leg drive unless you push on the top support bar. This could easily be rectified by stuffing something behind to reinforce or replacing the foot plates in the rear with a better material. I have heard there may be Carbon plates available but the factory does not respond to emails.

The Elite double comes with carbon footplates front and back which are rigid and allow good leg drive, although they can creak a bit if you push hard on them. I've had my Elite double for nearly 3 years and haven't had any problems with the footplates or the ski in general. Its a very nice ski, fast and pretty stable too.

If i remember correctly the Elite has a single foorwell at the Back, the XT has a double footwell at the back and single in front. The front footplate is fine however i would like to adapt the rudder cables to the same system as the custom kayak boats which allows for much easier changes to position without having to have tools available to adjust rudder cables.

Just wondering if this issue was resolved?

The rear footplates they have no solution yet, we have just braced the footplates from behind with rubber blocks.It's ok for our current configuration but if we chang paddlers we are back to square one, same goes for front pedal adjustment. We change drivers you need to have allenkeys on hand and have to take a minute to ensure you set up with the rudder straight. Not a huge problem in itself but compared to my Synergy where you just move the footplate it is tedious by comparison. If the need arose we would not be able to change position and have tha ability to steer if away from shore. Not sure if anyone has had to do that but was a scenario we both thought about. We need to apply ourselves but I am sure a temporary solution would be some sort of spacer that could just clip over the rudder cable between the pedals and adjusters. need about 3" adjustment between myself and partner.

I've done the same, cut some angled rubber blocks and inserted them into the gap between the footplate and the hull. Seems to work fine, but it shouldn't need to be done if a good solution was design.

Or in fact a reduce cost upgrdae when available would be nice?