West Marine

These guys call themselves ”America’s Best Boating Supply Source”… were they right?

I had no idea what West Marine was before someone purchased a gift for me from their online catalog. However, I consider myself lucky to have...

Living on Long Island and owning a boat for the last 15 years, we've become quite familiar with West Marine stores and their catalogs. While it is often convenient to just run into the store, there are times that the store just doesn't have what we need ...

I think it will be my one and only time shopping at West Marine. I ordered a GPS device, the price was terrific but when it arrived I realized why. The "NEW" gps had clearly been opened and used before getting to me. The sticker covering the SD card ...

Part One: I recently received in the mail a West Marine advertisement titled Fall Boating Values. Inside there was an advert for "50% Off Clearance!" "All Slalom & Water ski Combos" and in small print it says "Limited to stock on ...

I'm not impressed with West Marine online.

They're website is archaic. Items don't show up in your cart at times. Then if you try to search for the item again it's gone, but will be back 10 minutes later.

I did place an order because they were having a sale on boat shoes and when I found that after I placed the order, other shoes were "showing back up". I called to ask if they could be added to my order. NO. I asked if they could comp shipping for the second order. NO. What terrible customer service!

I'll see what happens on how they fill the order, but so far, I am not impressed and I won't be ordering from them again.


********UPDATE********
I received part of my order today. The other part is on backorder (wish I had known that before I bought them!).

One pair of shoes was in great condition. NO problems.

The other pair of shoes were without a box and DIRTY! I couldn't believe how much dirt was on them. I am disappointed and will point it out to their customer service.

The website's own product review system is suspect.  I have never been successful in posting a review - which is frustrating if you go to the trouble of writing up a paragraph.  At best, I'll say the website is bad.  Many of the products are inferior and I don't trust the associated West-Marine favorable reviews (where are all the negative product review?)

Having purchased inferior products, the return process can take a very long time with 3 to 4 weeks passing before West Marine will even acknowledge receiving your returned product.  It wastes my time and energy having to track progress for weeks before getting an aknowledgement and, eventually, a refund.

Lately, I've had much better experiences with other on-line stores.

I've been shopping at West Marine for as long as I've owned my boat (2 years). They always have tons of stuff. Don't go in there without a list or you'll get the "deer in the headlights" look. Today I did my first return, and I HATE to do returns. There were no problems whatsoever. I returned a bad propeller (manufacturing defect) without any hassle. I am determined to buy my replacement prop through West Marine just because of the good service they've given me.