SkipperBud's Madison — Attraction in Waunakee

Poor communication, and poor service. Originally my fiance and I had come in on Saturday with the intention of visiting Pharo Marine across the street, but they were closed. We decided to stop at SkipperBud's since we were there. First interaction was meeting the salesperson, who acknowledged my husband first, shook his hand, and then not only did not introduce himself to me, but actually cut me off while I was introducing myself and extending my hand for a hand shake. Not a good start. We decided to go with 1 of 3 available pontoons they had available (despite being told over the phone that they have hundreds available in their organization). Obviously they're not all going to be there or readily available, but when asked if we had any other options, I was told no. There was no real selling or rapport building..but more of a "take it or leave it" attitude. Being desperate to get on the water this season, we gave them $5,000 to hold it and were to wrap things up Monday/Tuesday. Every single communication was initiated by myself or my fiance. We did applications on Monday, and were told finance would be reaching out to go over things. No call. I emailed Monday evening asking for an update so we could plan the following day...no response. Next day (Tuesday...should be finishing this up by now)...no call. I email again, no response. We call in three times to try and get in touch with finance or our salesman. Finally get someone to answer and says finance is just about to call us. SURPRISE! We actually did get a call about an hour later! Bad news, financing isn't going well. (Funny we didn't hear until now considering credit was pulled first thing in the morning). Now listen, I'm fully of credit, financing, and worthiness on a borrower's behalf. I was told the application was sent a couple places and it's just not working. Do we want to try somewhere else? No thank you, no more inquiries on our credit please. I took it as a sign from baby Jesus that this wasn't the right thing. Keep in mind we're already on our way to Madison since we live 40 mins away and were under the impression we'd be signing papers soon SO...we went over to Pharo Marine, like originally intended, got treated with respect, honesty, fairness, and all around outstanding customer service from the second we walked in, to the moment we walked out less than 45 minutes later with a purchase order for a new pontoon. Not only were we given choices, but we got more equipment for less money, financing approved and competed at a stupid low rate in less than 12 hours, AND I was talked to like a human and an equally-capable buyer rather than a man-who's-in-the-market-for-a-boat's wife. THANK YOU SKIPPER BUD's for giving us the opportunity to buy from next door. Do yourself a favor and start at Pharo's. You won't be...

Very poor communication and zero follow through. As a family, we have been campers but decided to try boating. This is our first boat. I ordered a new Yamaha FSH center console last fall. They did get the boat in fast. I had the boat set up with a Humminbird system that was to be linked to a new Minn Kota trolling motor. The boat came in sometime in late December/Early January. I was to pick the boat up in early June, but that was delayed because they couldn't find the Humminbird or Minn Kota. I understand supply chain issues, but they had the boat for nearly 5 months and did not start to look for the parts I ordered until weeks before I picked the boat up. Being a first time boater, I had a lot of questions. They were too busy to give an on water demo, so they started the electronics up in "demo" mode. I was told that the Minn Kota was linked to the Humminbird, but without it being in the water they couldn't show me. It was not linked. In addition to that, the side imaging in the Humminbird didn't work because the transducer was not mounted properly. They damaged the boat in storage which required some repair. They did the fiberglass work and were to send me new decals that were damaged because I live hours away and didn't want to trailer the boat 3 hours to put on two decal packages. I was missing items on the boat that I was not aware of until I was helped by someone who owns the same boat. I did not receive the changing room curtain. When I sent emails to their service department and to Brandon who is one of their service techs on 6/14/22, I received no response. I also never received the decals they damaged or the curtain. I continued to wait for my registration that was to come in the mail from the DNR. I was putting in at a landing and was stopped by the DNR recently as there was no registration on my boat yet. I gave him all the paperwork that Skipperbuds provided me. The registration Skipperbuds provided me was never submitted to the DNR. I have taken my boat to River Valley Powersports and they have graciously handled everything I needed done in a short amount of time, even though I bought from a competitor. Buyer beware. They are quick to take your money here, but my experience convinced me that they could care less about you after they get their check. I was hoping for better....

Extremely disappointing service department. I dropped my boat off (the engine would die after slowing down from high speed) and was told it would be 3 to 4 days before they could look at it. Two weeks later I called to find out how it was going, they hadn't even looked at it yet but assured me they would get to it that day. Another week goes by and I get a phone call telling me I had a bad cylinder (low compression) and that it would cost 3 to 5 thousand dollars to rebuild - did I want to have them go ahead with the work? I said no I would come pick it up on Monday - they said it would be ready by 10:00. My wife arrives to pick it up after 10:00, it was very dirty and greasy (we dropped it off freshly washed and waxed - I could not believe they didn't cover up the white seats while working on it), parts were laying all over the boat, the very rude service person he told my wife it would not be ready until late afternoon. My wife took a couple of pictures and sent them to me. I could put the spark plugs back in and the water pump back on so I told her to take it the way it was. The service person said it would be too hard to get it out right now so she would have to come back anyway. I didn't want her to have to drive several more hours round trip in hopes they might get to it later. She was finally able to find another technician that was willing to move the boat that was in front of it to get it out of the shop, he even loosely bolted the water pump on. $290 seemed high for a compression test and nothing put back together or cleaned up but we wanted to be done with them.

Follow Up I took the boat to a different mechanic who looked into the cylinder with a camera and determined it was actually a bad injector, the injector was replaced for a less then a thousand dollars and the boat runs great now. If I had let SkippersBuds rebuild the cylinders like they proposed they won't have even fixed the right problem!

I would not recommend SkippersBuds for any type of engine...