Gold Star Marine

Armstrong Consolidated builds some scabby boats and don’t even have a human resources organized, the company looks lost.

Gold Star Marine’s business motto should be «Turning Dreams into Nightmares». I recently had extensive work done on my 47′ sailboat by Gold Star Marine including an engine repower and the installation of a hydronic heating system. In general, Gold Star Marine failed in three critical ways. They failed in workmanship, they failed in management, and they failed in communication. They did such a poor job that I am finding it difficult to capture how bad it was.
The work was sloppy, unprofessional, haphazard, inefficient and potentially dangerous. Wires were left dangling, hoses lying in the bilge, and work was left incomplete. I am still cleaning up the mess they left behind: sawdust, fiberglass, tools and parts. Frequently work had to be redone because it wasn’t done right the first time and I was billed for it all. For example, the motor mounts were not correct and had to be re installed. The heating system was not properly installed. They did not understand the system and were learning on the job (and billing me for this). After I researched the issues, I had to educate them on the proper installation and they then charged me for fixing the problem. Most recently, the alternator mounting bolt worked its way out and cut most of the way thru the alternator/​waterpump belt. Fortunately I discovered the problem before the belt failed. This is the belt that drives the cooling pump and would have been a dangerous failure.
Employees were unsupervised and planning was non existent. Management was uninvolved, not knowledgeable and unresponsive. The project took about 4 times as long as estimated. Weeks would go by with no work being performed. Work was done out of order and inefficiently. The employees had no respect for management and it showed in the lack of quality of their work.
The only communication that I received from Gold Star were periodic invoices. They generally did not respond to my emails or phone calls. Not once did they initiate a call or email. Never once did they hold good to a promised timeline.
I am a reasonable guy. My approach is to find top quality professionals and let them do their job. Unfortunately, I made a mistake with Gold Star Marine. They are not top quality professionals. The owners of Gold Star Marine seem to believe in the philosophy of over promise and under deliver, just give me your money. Are they malicious or just incompetent? From my perspective, the customer, it doesn’t matter. They should not be in a business where quality matters.

I turned to this business because it was given profile in a local boating club I belong to. I knew the problems that existed on my boat and called then for help. The service by the repair specialist was confirming of the problems but receiving an invoice for $ 400 with no repair is just unbelievable and not even a call back from the owner to work a deal!

I would not even give this business a 1 star rating. I had to put some star rating. We took our boat to them to install a fish finder fix the fuel gauge. Instead of calling after they diagnosed the issue to give me a quote, they went ahead with TWELVE DAMN hours of work… 12. Ridiculous joke of a professional business, $ 1200 later… mind you it was fish finders and a freaking gas gauge…
So the other reason they suck and I hope they run out of business someday, is one of the fish finders quit working the second time we went out and te gas gauge Went out also. The bow light was working when we brought it in, guess what, wasn’t working when I picked it up.
I spoke with the manager he said there was nothing they could do about it because we didn’t buy a warranty for the work they did, ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME??? It all stops working the next freaking day and you won’t fix it? Screw you all! DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME GOING TO THESE PIECE OF CRAP JOKES!