This web page details our opinions of and experiences with:

Glen Scott Fenske
Scott Fenske

of Granite Falls, Washington

This May be the Dumbest, Most Dishonest
Son of a Bitch on God's Green Earth

You Decide

 

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Glen Scott Fenske
POB 725
Granite Falls, Washington
98252

Glen Scott Fenske
13118 Lost Lake Road
Snohomish, Washington
98296

Glen Scott Fenske
11426 200th Ave. NE
Granite Falls, Wa., 98252

Various contact points include:

360-691-3548
scottgsf@earthlink.net

DOB 1952 -- Current age 54

Fenske's ad read, in part:
1972 19 Ft fiberform /new 215 hp engine / rebuild out drive - $3700
Jul-30 1972 19 Ft fiberform /new 215 hp engine / rebuild out drive - $3700 (Lake Stevens, Wash)
http://seattle.craigslist.org/sno/boa/188101071.html

The boat in question was purchased here:

When the average person sets out to make the average purchase (a small boat, let's say) from the average seller, you naturally want to take at least nominal precautions against BEING SCREWED. The world is a predatory place, after all, and people don't always tell the truth. In fact, they OFTEN LIE.

Still, if the seller seems stable, perhaps even a responsible home owner, with roots in the community, and a trailer court and property in his name, you might tend to be a little slack when inspecting his goods. After all, you know, and he knows, that if he screws you, you know where to find him. You know where to find him to serve him, to file suit, to attach his property.... And so you might tend to cut this type of seller a little slack because, after all, if he's an even remotely intelligent being, he won't intentionally screw you because he knows that recourse for you is easy.Unfortunately, every once in awhile, the unwary buyer runs across a stupid seller who perhaps never learned that lesson, or, more likely, was just too damned dumb to care.In August of 2006 we purchased a boat from Mr. Scott Fenske. It seemed a simple deal. A cursory inspection showed no obvious deceit. The seller, while insufferably obnoxious, didn't appear to be blatantly dishonest -- after all, if he was, we knew where he lived.

As it turned out, however, the dishonesty perpetrated by this man seems to be of the extreme variety. This page will document it, and will detail the remedies we're forced to persue to recover damages. This site will be updated almost daily as this case unfolds. Stay tuned. If you're a wronged buyer, this case will show you, step by step, exactly and precisely what you're up against in your attempts to set things straight. In the end we may not recover a dime in actual cash recompensation. But this page will at least document our attempts.

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Glen Scott Fenske of Granite Falls, Washington, had an old Fiberform for sale, advertised on Craigslist (we suggest avoiding Craigslist like the plague for ANY reason or purpose, EVER, but that's another story).

My son and I had decided we wanted a cheap little runabout to buzz around the area on occasion. To that end we replied to Fenske's ad.

We test drove the boat. We had asked that we be able to first view it when the engine was cold and had not been started for at least a few hours, preferably a day. But when we arrived at the meeting place we found Fenske racing up and down the lake -- so much for listening to the engine cold. That should have been our first clue, but people in my life have been trying to get me to "be nice" for decades, and I thought I would indulge them and try to conduct this simple transaction in a gentlemanly manner, without being a hard-ass and embarassing the seller.

About 5 minutes into the test drive, with Fenske still at the helm, he asked us if we'd ever been on a boat before. Well, as it happens, we had both been on boat rides a couple of times. For instance, I had fished commercially from Oregon to Alaska for decades, and had subsequently owned an offshore rescue tug company for many years, and had completed 321 rescues in the north Pacific, having rescued the US Coast Guard twice, and had raised 131 vessels off the ocean bottom. My son was a King crabber in the Bering sea and had appeared on "Deadliest Catch". So, yes, it was a fair statement to say that we had been for a couple of boat rides in our lives. A short while after answering Fenske per the above, he commenced in a fatherly tone to tell us what a bilge blower was for. And suffice it to say, without further discussion, this is how our entire interaction with Scott Fenske went for the next hour and a half, until we wanted to scream our lungs out -- or just knock him alongside the head with a pipe if we could find one, in hopes THAT would stop the pomposity. But honestly, that probably wouldn't have stopped it either. Typical brainless Goddamned yachtsman.

In the end we bought the boat, which was represented to do 50 mph (but couldn't be demonstrated at that speed as the engine needed 5 more hours of break-in at half throttle), and that the engine was still under warranty, and that the fuel tank had been personally swapped out by Fenske from a 60 gallon to an 80 gallon -- something which, in and of itself, was a huge factor in our decision to buy the boat, since it was going to end up in SE Alaska where fuel stops are few and far between. Fenske represented the battery as being "recent" (no date tag on it -- it failed a few days after we bought the boat). The fuel filler hose and breather-vent hose had been mis-routed which made fueling the boat almost impossible. We discovered that the fuel line connections had been slathered inside and out with a type of silicone which dissolves in gasoline, and so it went. The boat was represented as "problem-free", but of course we found the bilges full of bare, unsoldered wire connections, and we found most connections throughout the boat to consist of wires that had about 2 inches of insulation removed and were sloppily wrapped around terminals here and there. We could go on, and on, and on, and on with nit-picky little details and examples of stupid boat maintenance and ownership, but the letter from our attorney to Fenske, below, will highlight the highlights.

It could be argued that the entire mess is our fault because, after all, we KNEW how to inspect boats, we KNEW what to look for; all the warning signs about the seller were there, but instead of doing what we knew was right and necesarry, and tearing the boat apart for a full and comprehensive inspection -- a veritable SURVEY, we elected to listen to the women in our lives who made us promise to "make nice" and not embarass the guy. Is this mess, then, the fault of the women in our lives? Nope. It's OUR fault for listening to them. Lesson: The world is a predatory place, perhaps now in our evolution as much or more than at any other time. Honesty virtually does not exist. Honor? It's not even in Websters anymore. When it comes to your pocketbook, forget nice. There's always a slime-bag human predator willing to take your money under any pretense. Hopefully this page will educate the reader about even the simplest-sounding, most straightforward of transactions, and will teach that you must NOT let down your guard. Period.

UPDATE 12-16-06

-Received notification from attorneys that they have begun the procedure to file suit against Fenske. By law they must allow him some period of time to pay. We guarantee he's not intelligent enough to do so voluntarily, and that's fine; he can pay attorneys fees and court costs in addition. We expect to have copies of whatever they sent to Fenske after the first of the year and we'll post those docs here. At least now we can proceed with our criminal complaint.

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