YachtWorld Battle Plays Out From the Courts to Broker Offices

And Boats Group Did Not Pay To Settle Federal Lawsuit, Company Spokesperson Says

Peter Swanson Aug 19

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So the communications director for YachtWorld called the other day and said she wanted to set the record straight.

The topic was Ya Mon Expeditions v. Allied Marine. This lawsuit originally sought to represent boat buyers against what it has characterized as one big anti-competitive conspiracy between brokers, multiple-listing services and industry associations.

As reported here recently, Ya Mon was back in play after having been dismissed in January.

Significantly, one of the previous defendants was no longer there. That was Boats Group, which owns YachtWorld, Boat Trader and other online affiliates. Loose Cannon had speculated that Boats had been dropped for either tactical legal reasons or because of a cash settlement.

Courtey Chalmers is chief brand & communications officer at Boats, which makes her the public face of one of the most reviled enterprises in the marine industry—a tough gig.

“There was no settlement. The plaintiffs had the opportunity to pursue us in the reopened case, and they just chose not to. We think that the evidence really speaks for itself,” Chalmers said. “I think we’re obviously pleased we’re no longer a defendant in the case…But we absolutely did not pay them to go away.”

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There is a second lawsuit, however, that takes up where Ya Mon has since left off. This class-action-wannabe—Brill Maritime v. Boats Group—would pit America’s yacht brokers against the YachtWorld parent. It says Boats has allegedly violated the Sherman Anti-Trust act by establishing an anti-competitive monopoly. This case too was recently reopened after a federal judge said Brill had not proved its initial case.

‘Ya Mon’ Yacht Broker Suit Is Back Peter Swanson   ·   Aug 10 Read full story

“I’m not able to say much about that just because it’s ongoing. Yeah, it’s still real,” Chalmers said. “We did file a motion to dismiss, which is all part of public records, so you can take a look at that. We still believe strongly in our position and in the merits of that motion.”

Indeed, as part of the legal back-and-forth, Boats’ lawyers had filed a motion asking the judge to dismiss the new Brill case, just as he had the original.

In their motion, Boats’ lawyers argued Brill had combined a variety of weak arguments over Boats acquisitions over the years and other issues into an underwhelming “monopoly broth.” Here is a typical example of Boats’ rebuttal language:

That sleight of hand does not work. No matter how many bald accusations or anti-trust buzzwords Brill throws at the wall in its amended complaint, the reality remains that it has not and cannot sufficiently allege that anything that Boats supposedly did over the past 20 years-plus has harmed competition and prevented Brill or any other broker from using any of the numerous boat listing marketplaces that have launched since 2004.

Even if Brill falls, as Chalmers of course hopes, she is well aware that her company is widely unpopular among its customer base, and she acknowleged that boat brokers as a whole feel that Boats is overcharging for its services. She has grown used to addressing this issue with an argument about value:

I’ve been (at Boats) a long time and I can say hand-to-heart, we have invested significantly in the marketplaces and the technology that we have—the data and the tools. In the last three to five years you have seen huge changes in the tools, based on the feedback from our customers. So you know, I would encourage the customers who have a negative sentiment go into the tool systems and look around…We believe that the pricing reflects the value and the results that we, that we deliver. We reach a large audience of buyers globally.

Kent Little is owner of Little Yacht Sales in Kemah, Texas. He quit using YachtWorld last September, as have a growing number of yacht brokerages nationwide. Little said the total number of boats listed on YachtWorld used to be around 100,000. Now it’s down to 75,000 or so.

Not only is the service vastly overpriced, according to Little, but using Chalmer’s value argument to justify the cost is nonsense. He said the YachtWorld user-interface is obnoxious. He offered a hypothetical example, a potential buyer in search of a Grand Banks 42 motoryacht as an example.

“What happens when you get the pull up of the results: You see boats from everybody who is paying YachtWorld extra as an ‘advanced user’ or ‘premium user’ or whatever the hell they’re milking them for,” Little said. “All of those folks come up, you might not see a Grand Bank’s 42 for the first two pages of results because they’re throwing everything else at you.”

Little said that the private equity bankers who own Boats are laser focused on revenue at the expense of fairness and decency in customer relations. He said Boats’ pricing was wildly inconsistent; it gets what it can get from a broker.

“Here’s the biggest part, they change the rules to suit whoever they can get to pay the bills. There are brokers here in my area, but not a lot of brokers, and nobody’s paying the same price” Little said.