Yacht Broker Hits Back at Critique of Industry Accountability

'Cheap, Poorly Researched and Clearly Biased Takedown,' Bill Haynie Says

The author¹ is a yacht broker. All statements and opinions are his own. They have not been reviewed by or endorsed by his firm, nor are they a reflection of his firm’s values or opinions.

For a man with such broad experience in the marine industry, and especially for a self-proclaimed journalist with a publication named For Yacht Builders, Buyers, and Owners, Phil Friedman really surprised and disappointed me with his recent writeup on the lawsuit filed against the yacht brokerage industry.

This article (link below) fails to cover any meaningful developments or opine about the suit itself and instead amounted to a cheap, poorly researched, and clearly biased takedown (rather, attempted takedown) of the entire industry and of everyone in it from brokers to surveyors to title and documentation agents.

Suits Against Yacht Brokerages Subject Industry to Closer Scrutiny

Instead of reaching out to anyone who actually has an educated understanding of the yacht brokerage industry (note the lack of quotes and sources cited), Phil confidently decries the entirety of the long-held and long-trusted brokerage protocol as “unaccountable,” and he didn’t stop there.

He goes on to casually and broadly label every broker, surveyor and title agent as untrustworthy and valueless. Yet hundreds of thousands of clients (read: dummies and suckers, according to Phil) still come back year after year to do billions of dollars of transactions with thousands of brokers and with an exceptionally low rate of disputes or litigation (anecdotal, but it’s an educated anecdote—I welcome and invite comments from anyone who’s in a position to aggregate reports or metrics of such incidents).