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Quintrex Hornet - Boat of the Year or a Lemon

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Quintrex Hornet - Boat of the Year or a Lemon.

I read with interest Anthony Davies boat test on the new Hornets, especially the bit where he says that they were (pre-2004) probably the best of the “pointy punt” class of Bass and Barra boats.

Well this is the story of three of these boats and the hassle’s we had with Quintrex to fix the problems. I had a 435 Hornet (under survey) decked out for my fishing charter business, Un-Reel sportsfishing adventures. Morgan (Morgs) Lindley and Wayne Keene both had Hornet Trophies also decked out for Barra fishing.

I won’t bore you with the three story’s but just give you mine as they are basically the same, except Morgs whose boat was “Poipose-ing” from day 1.

Originally I had a 435 Hornet for recreational fishing only and it was a great boat, so much so that when switching to full time guiding I purchased (Oct.2000) a new hull under survey (D). Wayne had taken my boat for a trial run and was so impressed that he and Morgs both purchased new Trophy’s.

Unfortunately for all of us it was all down hill from there, by March2001, I had had the boat back (under recall) for fuel line problems and to fix the fuel gauge that was fitted backwards. Between May and Sept/Oct of the following year the floor had begun to lift and was a safety hazard to my clients.

The floor was taken up, a complete re-weld of cross braces, new braces installed and new floor installation. This was fixed under warranty and was probably the cause of all the ongoing problems.

Sept.2003, The hull had to be welded again as it had split by the winch hook up, the gunwales had to be re-welded as they had come away from the hull. This work was done at our dealers cost as Quintrex had refused to fix it under warranty and had stopped all correspondence with me and virtually washed there hands of it all. Even though our dealer was telling them we had a legitimate claim.

February 2003, we had to re-weld and brace the under floor staunchion, re-weld gunwales as they had split across welds and re-weld my rocket launcher.

March 2003,we had to re-weld a 30 cm plus split in the hull in the middle of the boat.

By this time I had made Wayne and Morgs aware of my problems and suggest they check there’s out. They had most of the same stuff with a few different varieties thrown in.

Out main bone of contention is the way we were treated by Quintrex and their staff. Most of the time they flat out refused to talk to us (It might be worth mentioning that the cost of the three boats was well over $70.000!) if they did, they inferred we used the boats in rough seas, speaking for myself I fish the Hinchinbrook Channel which is listed as Calm waters and if I have to fish when its blowing, I fish out of Fisher’s Creek which is wind free even in a thirty Knot wind! They even suggested to Wayne and co that they trailer’d their boats too far.

I had had enough when after fishing for half a day; I just made it to the ramp and let a huge amount of water out of the bunghole (the day of the 30+ split). I rang around and eventually finished up with John Roati who seemed to know what to do (apparently its against the law to sell an un-seaworthy boat!) as directly after receiving his letter, they rang to ask how they could help! Some decent customer service and a new boat!

After some to-ing and fro-ing of letters they agreed to supply me with a 2004 hull just so long as I parted with $1700 and that was the best I could do with out going to the courts. At this stage I had just about enough of all the horse shit that goes with this sort of thing and agreed, bearing in mind I had to pay for the change over, reg. and artwork as well.

Now Morgs and Wayne were waiting in the wings, to see how I faired before they went on with there claims (by this time they had hooked up to John Roati as well). Quintrex flat out refused to replace their boats only promising to repair them. At this stage its worth mentioning that Quintrex had beefed up the new Hornets with more and stronger cross members and thickened the hull to 3mm!

So repairing the boats wasn’t going to fix the problem!

John’s recommendation to them was that they go to the small claims court and pursue the matter there. To that end paper work was served on Quintrex who duly appeared at the courthouse, only to agree to Morgs claim 30 minutes before court!

Might have been something to do with the Stat/Dec of mine detailing the deal Quintrex had agreed to with me.

So the boys now are getting 2 new boats (they still have to pay some extra money) I am using my new hull and it does feel good to use and I feel confident this one will last (fingers crossed).

As a matter of interest I asked one of the higher ranked Quintrex staff why they made us go through all this drama. We had made offers to Quintrex suggesting that we would be prepared to pay some money to get a new hull long before we spoke to our lawyer. Her reply was that is “Company Policy”! I wonder how many other boat owners had given up in disgust and passed their boat on?

We would like to thank;

John Roati of Roati and Firth Lawyers. Ingham
Greg Hunt from Hunts Outboard Services. Tully
Ken Jones Marine. Yepoon.

Jim Lee, Wayne Keene, Morgan Lindley.