Complaint Review: AAAA Boats and Tires - Key Largo Florida

We bought a sailboat that was stored at Boats and Tires in 2007, and hired a trucker to haul the new boat up from Florida... The Monday before the weekend we were supposed to go down to coordinate the move, Sam Stoia of Boats and Tires called to go over the numbers for unstepping our mast. He wants to get started "disconnecting all the wires", etc. I told him we'd do that ourselves, we just really needed him to unstep the mast. Well, his insurance has changed, he says, and we can't work on the boat ourselves any more. And no, he doesn't have new yard rules in writing. And no, he can't fax us a copy of his insurance. "Just bring $2000 in cash and that should cover it"... Dropping a mast usually costs $100-200.

My wife calls the next day to set up a work order now Sam says his guys have to take down the solar panels, and we should "just bring $3000 in cash and we'll be fine." Sam, of course, treats Frankie like she knows absolutely nothing about boats, and our rig is so complicated, it'll take 2 guys 2 days to drop the mast, etc. etc. By the end of this call, Frankie had steam coming out of her ears. But our trucker is going to Florida on Friday, so we have him send us the work order. The work order shows up the next day. On it "Prep boat for transport time and materials labor at $68 per man-hour, crane time at $150/hour" No estimates, no limits. Now with some yards, that'd be just fine but Sam had previously tried to charge us for 25 hours of welding on a job that his welder had estimated at 2-4 hours. So Frankie asked for an estimate, and Sam blew his top.

The next day, I called Sam, and he gave me a long speech about how complicated it is to drop a mast our rig is so complicated, etc. etc. Whatever. He says "Just bring $4000.00 cash and you'll leave with change in your pocket." We fill out a work order - with generous not-to-exceed numbers, because we don't trust him anymore - and fax it in.

That evening, he emails our trucking company to tell them that we refused to sign a work order. Our trucking company calls the next day ready to pull out. We quick get on the phone to Sam, fax the work order again, call the trucking company - but by 11AM, they've had enough. They don't trust that Sam will release our boat, and they pull out. So we're left flying to Florida with no trucking company. When we got there, we called Sam to see what his current take is. Now he wants a $3000 cash "deposit" before he starts work, and then we can work out the additional bill once the work is finished but the additional charges "will probably be less than $4000.00." Time for Plan B. So we hired a boat transporter with a reputation as a "fixer".

The fixer went to the yard in person, with a truck, our letter of permission, cut the lock off our container and started loading our equipment up. Sam freaked out and was running around like a mad chihuahua. Then Sam apparently went into his office and checked up on who our guy was and came back out with a whole new more compliant attitude. Our transporter planned on taking the boat, too, but THE CRANE WAS BROKEN. The crane that Sam was charging us $150 an hour to use. It's sitting next to our boat broken. He couldn't have dropped our mast or loaded our boat on the truck anyways. Our transporter told Sam exactly what was and was not acceptable as far as work still to be done to splash the boat instead for towing to Lauderdale, and that he had to have the crane ready in time to move our boat the following Tuesday. We paid the insane yard bill, to the tune of  $3600 or so (he never did drop the mast, we had to hire someone else to do that), and got our equipment and boat out of there.

Bottom line is, by holding our boat hostage, Sam Stoia of Boats and Tires extorted several thousand dollars from us. We have since learned of another couple who came to him for an emergency prop shaft repair and got taken for $40000. DO NOT EVER DO BUSINESS WITH THIS MAN. He is a crook, plain and simple.