Tony
West Berlin,#2REBUTTAL Owner of company
Fri, June 30, 2006
As the owner of Franklin Trailers, Inc., and the person responsible for dealing with this "customer" I have first hand knowledge of this matter. (And by the way, my name is "Tony", not Frank). I am insulted, but then again, as I hear it, so is the business that they purchased the boat from. I can only say what happened from the point at which I got involved. This was when they brought the original trailer in to me. Bill and his wife came in and the tongue on their trailer was broken. When i saw it, I went through a lot of research to find out why this had happened. When I determined that the boat was a few hundred pounds too heavy for the trailer which by the way was not the reason it broke, I automatically offered to replace the trailer at Franklin Trailers expense entirely. I never questioned them as to whether is was the same boat, same motor or anything else for that matter. I simply said I will replace the trailer. My general manager called me and told me he was being harassed by Bill's wife. I was still in the midst of talking to my General Manager, having not been informed of the full story yet when my cell phone call waiting interrupted our call. It was Bill calling me to complain about not having been called. I told him I did call him before I left and told him I was getting him a new trailer. I had to order the correct one from my manufacturer, it took all of three days for that to happen. When the trailer came in it only had brakes on two wheels. Franklin Trailers put the brakes on the other two wheels rather than order another trailer - to satisfy my "customer". We then researched to find someone to transfer the boat from one trailer to another. I won't get into the "he said she said" but, the switch was made and it was questionable as to whether any other modifications were going to have to be made. Bill and his wife picked the boat up and used it for the first time on the new trailer. Bill called after that first use and explained that the boat would not go on the trailer perfectly straight and went on explaining the entire story to me all over again. I asked Bill to bring the boat back to me and we would take care of it. When he got there he told me the brakes did not feel like they were working properly and that the boat felt like it was pushing his truck. I explained that I would certainly look at that too. The boat was left with us, we took all the wheels off the trailer to inspect the brakes. We found all the brakes functioning properly but two wheels were out of adjustment. As a precaution we bled the brakes, put them back together and adjusted them. It was then towed around the yard by my truck to insure proper function. Bill was called by me to tell him he could pick it up. I asked that he not bring his wife. She had been so verbally abusive to myself and my staff that we did not want any further confrontations with her. He said he was not sure he could do that. I responded that if he were to bring his wife I was going to call the police. I was never anything but professional and courteous to Bill and his wife. Bill came by himself and picked it up. I was with Bill when the boat was hooked up to his truck and everything was explained as to what we did and what he must do after launching the boat to rectify the situation of the boat not coming up straight. Before he left I asked Bill to pull up and hit his brakes hard to make sure they were ok. He did that to the extreme and locked up the wheels as if in a panic situation. He made a comment smiling as he continued out "guess you didn't want it to fall off in your parking lot huh". I smiled and said "yes". When Bill got home he called me and asked me to mail him his registration . Because he had gotten out of our place so quickly he had forgotten it. He explained that one of the wheels were warm and I told him to come right back and I would tear everything apart again to find out if there was anything wrong - again. He said he would wait to see if maybe it was from locking them up in my parking lot. Now to the good stuff, my general manager was called numerous things that I would rather not repeat and was told he should apologize to her son for not being able to take the boat out. My manager suggested that she apologize to her son for her language and for the way she treats people. I do not give my personal cell phone number out to anyone for business but i did give it to Bill and told him if there were anything he needed to call me - "what a mistake!" You know being in business for over thirty years I have learned to accept and to deal with things professionally. This one happens to be very hard to do that with especially after I found out about this "suppossed rip off report". First of all with no questions asked I replaced a trailer my company sold TWO YEARS earlier, and at my companies expense entirely! I took nothing and my general manager took nothing but abuse since the beginning of this problem. Although at this point it is strictly hearsay, I have even been told that the company who they bought the boat from told them "their business was no longer welcome there". I used to have a sign in my store that said "You can please some of the people all of the time but you can't please all the people some of the time" this statement could not be more true. To go a step further you cannot please someone any of the time. I have spent many years to earn the confidence and trust of the public by being the most honest and offering high quality work for many years and I am not going to sit and take abuse from someone who lack the knowledge and has nothing better to do with her time.