I have two comments to make on this.
By way of background, I absolutely love my boat, that said I am not enamored with GW as a company nor do I dislike them. As a person that makes his living designing and building manufacturing facilities which includes designing and engineering custom fixtures and equipment I have some experience with design and manufacturing. My assessment of GW is that the firm is well above average as a manufacturer but not an elite company by any metric.
I bought my 2008 Tournament 275 in October of 2007, took delivery in December of 2008 and put the boat into service in April of 2008.
I have had a number of minor issues and one substantial issue with my boat that is still unresolved. GW has handled the minor issues well (more accurately my dealer has) but has punted on the big one. I have been critical with the GW factory on several issues that were simply put very poorly designed that in turn caused the larger unresolved problem.
To my point, I have never heard from J.D. Powers and was never questioned as to my level of satisfaction with GW or my boat by J.D Powers or anyone representing them. I see a possible correlation here that bothers me with respect to this survey. Certainly GW does not sell that many boats (ca 1,400 +/- per yr) that J.D. Powers could not survey all new owners.
My second comment as was noted previously, why is Contender, Marine Regulator, Southport or Sea Craft not on the J.D. Powers coastal boat list? OK, I might accept the argument that these boats are in a different class but what about Pursuit??? They make the same product line for all intents and purposes as GW. It is not a true competition in my eyes when your number one competitor is not being evaluated against you.
Sorry guys but to me J.D. Powers is not credible in this particular evaluation.
