Marina Dock Age, March 2008

Dealing with deadbeat slipholders
by Dennis P. Kissman

I was recently asked a question about how to deal with deadbeat slipholders. It can be summed up in a single word, aggressively. When I say aggressively, you are probably thinking of threatening collection letters and phone calls or even possibly engaging the services of a lawyer or collection agency. All that sounds well and good, but in the end you lose.

When I speak of taking aggressive action, I mean get that boat out of the slip as fast as you can. Let us look at it logically: The person probably already has financial or other problems; otherwise, he or she would be paying their slip fees. Let us say you decide to chain the boat in the slip to keep it from disappearing as a security for that person’s debt to you. By chaining the boat, all you have done is given that person a place to keep his boat with no way to pay.

Remember, you only have 365 days a year to collect money from that space. Is not the logical approach to get that boat out of your marina sooner rather than later? My experience has shown that the longer you hold on to the hopes of collecting that debt, the more it will cost you. It is better to cut your losses and move on.

Getting the boat out of your marina
The question now becomes how to get those boats out of the slips. Unfortunately, for many marina owners, success is measured solely on the total number of boats in the marina, and not just those that are paying to be there. If you are one of those people, you have a personal conflict that you are going to have to overcome before any program to remove deadbeat slipholders from your marina will be successful. For those of you that do not have a problem like this, it is still not as easy as cutting the dock lines and pushing the boat out of your marina. The solution starts before the problem begins, meaning the documentation you use when a new customer signs up.

Every state has variations as to your rights regarding boat removal from your marina of non-paying customers. We have learned through the years a couple of things that will help prevent the problem in the first place or expedite eliminating it.   Continue »

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