Minn Kota rant

[Hunt2871]

have you considered skipping the certified, approved, oem, factory trained, gold tech, etc: and take it to a real mechanic? in this world today, where everyone gets a participation trophy and cannot be fired, there are still Americans that have the intelligence and abilities to make a customer happy.

The issues he is describing sounds like software issues and the software is proprietary.....I am, as we speak, in the process of trying to hack a power drive's gps to make it communicate with Garmin graphs and to build a live scope transducer mount which will point toward a coordinate much the same way as ipilot points a motor and it is tough sledding. I am pretty good at hacking things but thus far I am having my issues. That said having a ton of old school mechanical aptitude is probably not going to help with the issues he is describing....it is probably going to be a matter of replacing a circuit board which could be replicated but it would take a LONG time most likely and would cost a heap of money....

 

[Hunt2871]

They called me back today and wont give my refund. Dont have the parts to fix my motor and in their words I dont deserve a refund because it only failed once.

She told me to get refund through amazon and again blamed amazon for being “notorious for this.”

I explained to her I understand their situation with parts etc but its really not my fault. I expected that by buying a $2000 trolling motor with a warranty I would not have any problems on the third use. She felt like I was asking for too much. I said that respectfully i have a whole unit thats barely used right here they can have back for parts or to resell if they just return my money. She wasnt aligned with that. So im pretty confident the issue will return and Ill be stuck on a fishing trip with a bad motor and ill have to go through this all again.

Last time ill ever buy Minn Kota.

I messed around about a year ago and hooked up my 2020 Mercury 60 HP battery backward. Stupid mistake but it happened. Blew a diode in the ignition circuit. This motor had exactly 5 hours on it at the time. The part was around $80 and was.....wait for it......on back order and had been for over a year. I found this hard to believe but it was absolutely true....and to make it that much worse every electric start Mercury outboard built in the last 30 years or so has this same part in the ignition circuit somewhere.....from the smallest to the biggest motors they sell they all have this exact same part in them.....and to the best of my knowledge Mercury had not had any of them in stock for spares from at least from at least March or so of 2020 until now! That is not a supply chain issue that is just very bad management planning. The reason I know this is I made this part for my motor for $.18....yes, an $80 part for 18 cents and it is identical to the one that Mercury can not source anywhere on the planet...where I bought enough material to make a couple of hundred of them on amazon and had it all delivered to my house in 3 days for less than $20 all in. I told Merucy that I had 99 of them in stock LOL and they said it would invalidate the warranty on a new motor LOL.


Imagine that....a 300 HP outboard sitting idol for a year or so for want of 18 cents worth of diode and the manufacturer is concerned about the warranty...on a motor they can not get parts for under any circumstance LOL. That has NOTHING to do with COVID, supply chain issues, global warming or anything other than bad management, period. It is universal in the world today and you can rest assured that these mismanaged companies in these mismanaged industries are going to start whining for a bailout sooner than later and both parties will be pushing one another out of the way to facilitate that money grab.

 

[MrGiggles]

Minn Kota had, at one time, a waiting list of almost a year for a new Ulterra of any size. That is absolutely ridiculous. You coudn't buy one at any price....I tried.....I offered Minn Kota double suggested retail. They would not sell me one. That is not a supply chain issue...they were selling them, they just were not selling them for what they were worth at the time. They had SOME to sell, they just insisted that the what stock they did have sold for exactly the same price as what they did when they were plentiful. That is simply refusing to accept a fundamental economic law....if supply drops and demand remains the same or increases prices MUST increase. I just went through the same thing with Garmin and the LVS34 transducer. Nearly 6 months. They had them, they were just selling them for less than they were worth....a lot less. That is just really bad management disguised as a supply chain issue which is based in nothing more than pure laziness. If I were selling transducers I would sell them to the highest bidder first.....but I would be in business to make money, not make friends or whatever it is they think they are doing. Smart companies are going to clean their clocks....

So you're complaining about a company that refused to price gouge during a shortage? Okay then...

That's a good way for them to end up like those idiots that ended up with a garage full of toilet paper. I'm no business expert but I'd say "don't piss off your customer base" is high up on the list of things not to do.

 

[C&K]

We also bought a new Minn Kota PowerDrive that the steering didn't work out of the box. Bought it from a local retailer. Took it back to the store to have it replaced, but they didn't have another one in stock so they refunded our money on it.

At the time couldn't get a new Minn Kota trolling motor anywhere because of a shortage of them. I happened to see these Haswing Cayman B 55 trolling motors online and watched a few reviews on them on YouTube. So we bought one. We have had it for two years now and it works flawless. I don't know how many hours we've put on it but it's a lot - we live right on the lake and we're out 3-4 times a week fishing. The remote is rechargeable and easy to use, and comes with a charging cable that plugs into one of the USB ports in your boat.

The only problem we've ever had with it is that the remote has an orange Reset button on the front it. IF you push that by accident it will reset it and have to re-pair the remote. We've never had any problems with pairing or losing signal with the remote by itself but if you hit that Reset button it will lose the signal.

It's a lesser known brand but we've been very happy with it and they've been around for quite awhile now.

 

[Hunt2871]

Minn Kota had, at one time, a waiting list of almost a year for a new Ulterra of any size. That is absolutely ridiculous. You coudn't buy one at any price....I tried.....I offered Minn Kota double suggested retail. They would not sell me one. That is not a supply chain issue...they were selling them, they just were not selling them for what they were worth at the time. They had SOME to sell, they just insisted that the what stock they did have sold for exactly the same price as what they did when they were plentiful. That is simply refusing to accept a fundamental economic law....if supply drops and demand remains the same or increases prices MUST increase. I just went through the same thing with Garmin and the LVS34 transducer. Nearly 6 months. They had them, they were just selling them for less than they were worth....a lot less. That is just really bad management disguised as a supply chain issue which is based in nothing more than pure laziness. If I were selling transducers I would sell them to the highest bidder first.....but I would be in business to make money, not make friends or whatever it is they think they are doing. Smart companies are going to clean their clocks....

[highlight=yellow][highlight=yellow]So you're complaining about a company that refused to price gouge during a shortage? Okay then[/highlight][/highlight]...

That's a good way for them to end up like those idiots that ended up with a garage full of toilet paper. I'm no business expert but I'd say "don't piss off your customer base" is high up on the list of things not to do.

"Price gouging" is the foundation of a free market. Many a publicly traded company has attempted to ignore the laws of economics and eventually it does damage to some extent. Johnson Outdoors is not immune to these laws. Their investors are fat and sassy currently because like most American companies they enjoyed a windfall of COVID protection while their consumer base experienced a similar windfall coupled with more free time and boredom. It is not sustainable and the reason long term, pervasive inflation is going to be a massive issue globally for the foreseeable future. Far better to sell generators after a hurricane for whatever price the market will bear than to simply raise prices slowly and create an artificial shortage of generators that will keep the prices higher than they would be over a longer period of time. Price gouging, as it is called, is simply a free market doing what it does....refusing to acknowledge that basic market function leads to all manner of illness in an economy.

A sizeable % of Minn Kota's annual production is bundled with new boat sales and are contracted prior to manufacturing. The refusal to acknowledge market conditions lead to an increase in the sales of those products and many of the consumers of those products financed them for as long as 12 or more years. They ain't going to continue to pay that bill. Lenders will have no choice but to pass those costs along to consumers who do pay their bills....another basic foundational element of a free market. Price gouging, as it is called, would have mitigated this to some extent....had Minn Kota sold their products for what they were worth fewer people would have made the rash decision to buy them and they would not be faced with insurmountable debt which will be borne by the consumer going forward. Minn Kota and I could have entered an agreement whereby I paid what I was comfortable for their product and Minn Kota was comfortable selling it....instead the decision was made to support an artificial shortage of products that would lead to modest price increases that will be borne by consumers for YEARS to come instead of the short period of time when there was an actual crisis. This decision was made because they were fat and happy with a windfall of "free money" which made the last quarter look fantastic with no regard to quarters 36 months down the road.

This short sighted decision will also lead to the increase in awareness of alternatives by consumers. You can rest assured a LOT of Watersnake and New Port vessel trolling motors were sold to people who would have preferred to pay twice the MSRP of a Minn Kota product and many people will realize those products are as good as Minn Kota. Simply bad business decision making focused on short term gains over the long term health of a business and industry.

 

[Hunt2871]

We also bought a new Minn Kota PowerDrive that the steering didn't work out of the box. Bought it from a local retailer. Took it back to the store to have it replaced, but they didn't have another one in stock so they refunded our money on it.

At the time couldn't get a new Minn Kota trolling motor anywhere because of a shortage of them. I happened to see these Haswing Cayman B 55 trolling motors online and watched a few reviews on them on YouTube. So we bought one. We have had it for two years now and it works flawless. I don't know how many hours we've put on it but it's a lot - we live right on the lake and we're out 3-4 times a week fishing. The remote is rechargeable and easy to use, and comes with a charging cable that plugs into one of the USB ports in your boat.

The only problem we've ever had with it is that the remote has an orange Reset button on the front it. IF you push that by accident it will reset it and have to re-pair the remote. We've never had any problems with pairing or losing signal with the remote by itself but if you hit that Reset button it will lose the signal.

It's a lesser known brand but we've been very happy with it and they've been around for quite awhile now.

This is why Minn Kota's decision to ignore market conditions based on short term windfalls at the expense of long term corporate health will prove to be detrimental going forward. Minn Kota is not alone in this, in fact it is part and parcel of why the world's economy is subject to boom and busts more so than it was 50 years ago....executive compensation is based on shareholder value LAST quarter with little or no regard to the same value next quarter, let alone 60 months in the future. The windfall of COVID protections made it possible and we are now seeing the inevitable inflation that would have been impossible with timely reaction to market conditions, also known as price gouging.......

 

[Hunt2871]

That's a good way for them to end up like those idiots that ended up with a garage full of toilet paper. I'm no business expert but I'd say "don't piss off your customer base" is high up on the list of things not to do.

They did not avoid pissing off their customer base though....they pissed them off by telling them it would be 12 - 18 months wait for a new trolling motor. In the process they missed out on increased profitability based on foundational free market economy principals. The impact of those losses was more than mitigated by the windfall offered by massive COVID protections and the last quarter looked good....but the same quarter 60 months from now will not because of the impact of those decisions. 2-3 times MSRP for a product is not sustainable over any period but it is far more sustainable and exponentially favorable to massive increases in government spending in an economy that was already BLISTERING hot. You can not put a fire out by pouring gasoline on it....it is far easier to accept a bail out than it is to react to market conditions and unfortunately the trend over the last few years in the world made it very easy to make that decision...and consumers are going to pay a heavy price for years to come when it would have lasted maybe 6 months, if that, had companies did the work and adjusted to the market as it really was instead of cashing the welfare checks.....

 

[CRS]

MInn Kota are "made" in America, parts come from China. "Question: Are Minn Kota motors made in China?
Answer: Minn Kota motors are manufactured and designed in America, but some of their products are created in China. This is because China can manufacture its products faster and materials are more widely available."(from Boat Bub) " There is the problem CHINA. China has zero quality control that is why some units perform as expected and other fail miserably. Read the reviews of any Chinese made product, some love them and the product performs as advertised, many fail or do not even work out of the box. Plastic parts break or deteriorate rapidly. This applies to all China produced parts of all industries. Regardless of the BS of why China "manufacture its products faster and materials are more widely available" no other reason than CHEAP. Just look at the current problem with micro chips, all because the CEO's wanted cheap. The Chinese also will copy and market under different logos every product they make without fear of any real reprisal, they just change the name and go back to selling.
I am a designer of injection molds and I take inventors ideas and make them practical for manufacture, I have personally witnessed the poor quality of anything produced in China. I advice my customers to avoid the mirage of cheap parts/products from China, some choose to ignore this. To date all have failed because of poor manufacturing and copies. Those willing to stay in the USA have been successful, it costs more but your ideas can be protected better. Minn Kotas supply problem stems from only one reason CHINA.

 

[sonny.barile]

Boy…..this went way out in the weeds…… :LOL2:

When you buy something you want it to work. If it doesn’t work, the company has 3 choices…… Fix, exchange, or refund. If they have supply chain issues for the parts…it’s a them problem. Next on the list is exchange. If they can’t do that it’s refund. Covid policies at that company are not your policies. Fight tooth and nail……..use email to get date records.

I’m sorry to hear you are having this trouble. I know what stuff like this feels like. It’s very frustrating, Hope it ends well and soon for you.

 

[KevinWI]

That sucks for sure.
I like minnkota, but the powedrive is sort of the Fredo of the lines they offer. Not that anyone should have those issues less than a year of use.
I was frustrated with mine as I had to slam my foot to get it to release.....
Very happy with my Terrova....have not tried the more expensive models, but some day I will. Good luck.