Every boater`s worst nightmare came for me: I managed to sink my boat. Don`t want to remember the details, but it was clearly my fault. I had no choice but to settle with the outcome and get a new one. I simply cannot live without having a boat. It was not as easy as I thought because I could not afford a new one and there weren’t any good ones nearby.
So I started looking online for an used Xstar. I was skeptic about it because I was afraid that I`ll end up being scammed. With all the horror stories out there, one can never be sure. My personal opinion is that most of the people who sell stuff over the internet can`t be reliable and not all websites are legit. But I had no choice so I gave it a try.
At first I tried Boattrader. There were a few, but the prices there were over the roof. On top of that, they had many hours on it. The sellers were telling me that those engines were good, but I was more afraid about the cosmetic aspect. Why would I pay a high price for a boat that has 200+ hours? I can’t see the logic in it, but the dealers selling this type of junk have a pretty good arsenal of stories. I wonder how many people bite on those.
Then I tried eBay. After several eBay „Vehicle Protection Program” fake emails, I came across a seller that seemed legit. The boat had all the features that I wanted and a decent amount of hours. The only „little thing” that stood between me and the boat was the 2,213 miles distance. The guy selling it had a small truck company. He agreed that he`ll ship it to MarineMax for a full survey, but he wants to use an escrow service just to be sure that I`m not joking around. eBay recommends escrow.com but also eBay recommends PayPal. Anyone with any kind on sense knows that it`s a fool`s gamble to try a 50K transaction trough PayPal. I also heard many horror stories about locked PayPal accounts. The logical thing would be not to follow eBay`s recommendations because all they care about is making money. Oh, and the also own PayPal. I goggled around and found sdleaders.com. Their reviews looked good, but then again these online things aren`t my type. After an intensive 2 day research I decided to go with it.
When the boat finally got here, it seemed like all my prayers were answered. Lucky me! The guy was so confident that I`ll take it that he even sent the signed title and the bill of sale along with the boat. I released the money from sdleaders and I was good to go. Their services are reliable and they seem like a good alternative to eBay`s recommendations.