Sadly, Oliver of UK Sails is not worthy of your business. He lacks integrity and provides shoddy, if not potentially dangerous, service. He may have been a great sailmaker in the past, but no more, in my opinion. So don't let his mild mannered persona fool you; in my experience, he will lie if it suits his purposes.
In terms of UK Sailmakers, in general, I also now believe, wholeheartedly, that this may be a company wide problem due to the fact that the local sail loft in La Paz, Mexico, said they could not invoice UK Sails directly for the repairs because they had already been stiffed by them once before.
Specifically, the following represents the work of Oliver of UK Sailmakers in Marina del Rey, CA.
1) Repairs made to my Foresail's UV cover had to be redone in La Paz, Mexico due to seam failures during the trip down from Los Angeles.
2) Multiple mistakes in the measurement of a brand new Mainsail, such as:
a) Mainsail Leech measured incorrectly, resulting in it being so large it overlapped the backstays by more than a foot.
i) Trying to justify the rubbing of the mainsail's leach on the backstays as being okay.
ii) Trying to get by with merely repairing this brand new Mainsail in his shop.
iii) To his credit, he did finally order me a whole new mainsail. However...
b) Failing to measure the Reefing Rings, making it impossible to reef the replacement Mainsail during my trip from Los Angeles to La Paz, Mexico. Very dangerous; thank you, Oliver!!
c) Not caring enough about the initial install to flake the mainsail in such a way as to begin training it correctly.
3) Repeatedly breaking his word, as recorded in his voicemail message to me, to reimburse me $113 (yes, just $113) for the correction of the Reefing Rings he promised to pay for.
a) Lying about being unable to refund the money to the very credit card he used for the mainsail purchase.
b) Assuming the above refund to my credit card was truly not possible: failing to inform me of the issue for over a week, forcing me to repeatedly call from La Paz, Mexico to chase it down.
c) Failing to deposit the money directly to my checking account, as subsequently promised, and offering no excuse as to why not, except to complain about this $113 correction cost "being so much", despite initially telling me not to worry about the cost in his voicemail message.
d) Never corresponding about his broken promises to refund me, thus forcing me to spend over $20 in long distance phone card charges to call repeatedly from La Paz, Mexico, without result, over a three week period.
e) Eventually, requiring me to send a demand email threatening to expose his lack of integrity.
4) In response to my demand email and voicemail message, Oliver:
a) lied and misrepresented the situation to a mutual friend/professional, saying that I was angry over nothing and poor innocent Oliver was not to blame. Instead, the Corporate Offices were responsible for the refund. However, out of the goodness of his heart, he would reimburse me himself. (I know all this because he played her my voicemail message and had her call me in response, instead of handling it himself, saying I needed to "back off".)
b) ignored my final payment deadline and delayed payment even further.
He did finally refund the $113, though he refused to include the extra $20 I had also demanded to reimburse me for all the long distance phone charges required to chase him around. read more
