I see a lot of fault in this story, in this order:

1. The dealer 2. The owner 3. The equipment suppliers 4. Hunter

Most of his problems stem from trading in his existing boat to a Wisconsin dealer, but delivering the boat to Florida and having it "commisioned" long distance by the Wisconsin dealer. This is a very awckward situation and led to most of the problems he experienced. The dealer should have known better.

I have a good friend who is the east coast dealer for a line of Chinese built boats that are always delivered to the Port of Norfolk. He lives and works in Rhode Island. He will spend a minimum of one and usually two weeks handling the commisioning of the boat. And then he will often deliver it hundreds of miles away, shaking it down and fixing things along the way. Unless the dealer spends this amount of time at the dock, managing the commisioning, you will have these kinds of problems. With the lower base price and maybe smaller dealer margin, I would never expect this kind of deal to work succesfully.

David