Posted on 01/13/2012 9:58:56 AM PST by Abathar
WESLEY CHAPEL, Fla. - Bob Williams calls it "modern-day piracy."
A few months ago, an anonymous donor gave a large expensive boat to Support the Troops, a charity Williams runs that takes donations and sends them to troops serving overseas.
Williams made plans to use the boat, being stored on the east coast of Florida, to generate money for his charity. The charity houses thousands of boxes at its warehouse in Wesley Chapel, waiting to be sent overseas. However, the charity struggles to generate enough money to pay for postage.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcactionnews.com ...
They must be pretty rotten b*stards to do this for docking fees if it was out of the way, I hope this story goes viral and they lose their business over it. They saw a chance to grab that boat knowing it was the only way he could pay, and they took it.
Bottom line...
ALWAYS get a contract in writing...
Handshakes don’t mean squat now-a-days..
I still don’t understand why he doesn’t go ahead and scrap the ship for 100K and pay Beyel the dockage fee and keep the rest. Whatever’s left is still more than what he had before.
...seems to me, the money received from selling the boat (originally) could have paid a lot of postage...something's not right here
“Butler said they rejected a deal where the first $50,000 from the scrapping of the ship would go to Beyel Brothers, with the next $50,000 going to the charity. Butler said they needed the money up front to surrender the ship.”
Because the article says Beyel won’t release the boat to be scraped until he pays the docking fee up front and he doesn’t have that money to pay.
I don’t know. the boatyard could be going back on their handshake. But something about this story makes me feel that this is one sloppy and possibly questionable charity. The story says:
“Williams made plans to use the boat, being stored on the east coast of Florida, to generate money for his charity. ... Williams tried to take the boat from the east coast of Florida to Tampa so it could be prepared for its business usage.”
“Business usage” sounds oddly vague. And couple that with the fact that a registered (tax exempt) charity can’t run a side business to generate a profit that they use for charity. Are they a registered charity? Does Williams volunteer his time for free based on a handshake agreement? Or does he get paid a salary? Is it more than $50,000?
Like I said, this could be a case of a greedy and unscrupulous boatyard owner taking advantage, but it could also be a story about very sloppy management.
The fact that they Beyel brothers won’t agree to a 50/50 split on the sale of the boat to recoup their “fee” shows the greedy bastards for what the are.
No bearing at all on their decision to basically seize the boat and stiff the charity.
He is probably unable to move the boat as long as he owes the fees.
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I see your point. I figured it would be like them getting a hot-air balloon donated to them. They could sell it for cash, or use it to give tours and generate profit, which they could use, then eventually sell the thing if it doesn’t pan out. The boat will always be worth a tidy sum, but perhaps it could be used to generate even more somehow.
Just giving them an armchair dollop of some benefit of the doubt.
So right...handshake deals aren’t worth the paper they’re not written on!!
Here is a much better write up:
http://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/wesley-chapel-man-balks-at-53210-boat-docking-bill/1209984
This guy on a shoe string budget took delivery of a lemon money pit yacht, didn’t have the manpower, staff, knowledge, money nor financial wherewithal to maintain the donated yacht,
He then had another 163 foot yacht parked at the facility.
and left the 70 foot and 165 foot yachts on a dock for over 90 days.
Williams is an a**hole for going to the media trying to play the sympathy angle.
These are commercial slips, that dock space is someone else’s livelihood.
This sounds like an elaborate scam. What’s the real story?
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