Catalina Direct

I will address the complaining party's issues one at a time, in the order he presented them. The complainant's words will be in italics."They maliciously advertise exhaust products for sailboats at a certain price, then after you've completed your order they come back saying they 'need more...

information' and then tell you they won't sell you the parts without ALSO buying their own proprietary heat shields."We offer exhaust risers to our customers. Quality and safety are of paramount concern to us. We state very clearly on the webpage for each riser we require an appropriate jacket, and go into detail to explain why we require it (refer to the printed copy of the webpage, as well as the "Important notes:" text I have included). When the complainant "completed" the order, he had not been charged yet for the very reason that we require his approval on the final amount, with any appropriate adjustments that are needed. He was never actually charged anything, as he demanded that we cancel his order before we were ready to bill him."Their price for a heat shield is in the $60 range."Basically true, the jacket for his riser sells for $157.89.You can buy your own heat shield wrap for about $30.We will accept that it may very well be possible to do so, though such a wrap is good for only a single use. You would have to buy and assemble a new one every time you inspected or serviced your riser. We wanted to offer one that could be re-used indefinitely. To make a functional disposable wrap, a layer of metal mesh is required in order to provide the required air gap. This ferrous metal rusts over time, turning into a pile of debris."While they claim a 'safety' angle as the reason, their heat shields are inferior to what someone can achieve using standard heat shield wrap."We would like to inform the complainant that we source our thermal jackets from the exact same manufacturer that makes the exhaust wraps for NASCAR. Our thermal wraps are fabricated from high temperature (1800 degree) silica glass with a ceramic fabric core, and are superior in quality to what the average person can cobble together, and our's are re-usable to boot."This is not only false advertising, but price gouging."As can be seen on our webpage for this exhaust riser, and all of the other ones we offer as well, our requirement to purchase our jacket is clearly stated, as well as the reasons why. If it is clearly stated, and in fact highlighted, it completely baffles us as to how he could refer to this as false advertising. As to 'price gouging', we are offering the jacket at a reasonable sell price for cover our cost and make a reasonable profit. It is our belief that offering a riser without a protective jacket would be irresponsible and dangerous, and while we cannot force the customer to install one, we can at least make sure he has a correct jacket in hand when he receives his riser. Relying upon the customer to provide their own jacket cannot provide us with the assurance that it will be made correctly, or even made at all. We chose to list them separately so that if a customer has purchased both components from us in the past, they can replace only one if the need arises.

nice and informed group that seek to exlain and help with any related sailing questions

I was prepared to spend a lot of money with this vendor. I purchased an item. They called me to upsell me and quoted a price, to which I agreed. They then called me back to raise the price and wouldn't honor their quoted price. When I asked to speak to someone in authority, the sales rep offered to put me on hold for three days, then claimed he was being nice. The president of the company refused to make it right or even apologize for the rudeness of his employee. I will never do business with them again.