"boat trader is by far the WORST experience I have ever had attempting to sell anything! I will be all over social media providing reviews anyway I can to express my frustration with this organization. I communicated often with boat trader about the barrage of spam and fraudulent attempts to swindle me out of money, they did nothing! I have more fraud attempts from boat trader in a week then I have ever received from Craigslist. Quite frankly I don’t understand how you are in business, I am a cyber security software engineer, if my environment was as horrible as boat traders I’d be fired!!!"

"They put up ads without vetting.
Allow scammers to use their site.
I responded to ad from Rivermarine inc.. it was a total scam. Ran the HIN for boat and VIN for trailer through malibu… neither in their data base.
So dont trust anything on Boattrader… do your due diligence if you do.
"

"We listed a boat, and got 0 calls on it. Did not realize the fee was auto-renewed until several months later. When you deactivate the account you have to check you understand deactivation will result in not getting a refund. "

"I signed up for 6 months and paid around $250. In 3 weeks, i've had 4 emails that were people trying to SCAM me. This has been a horrible experience, so i called and asked for a refund. They only give you 24 hours to potentially get a refund, which is not reasonable. No refund, instead i'm just screwed. Terrible business and i would would Never recommend working with this platform. Seller Beware! "

"I gave Boat Trader one star only because it is not possible to choose zero.

Their web-site is, hands-down, the worst I have ever used. It's like a very old house that started out small and.had many ill-conceived, poorly designed, hodgepodge "improvements" over many rears. Along the way several of the obvious and most often considered necessary features of a home were never included. Sure, there's a front door, a bunch of walls, and a few windows, but very little else. It's horrible. It needs to be bulldozed. A new one might be built, but only by people that have had very little or no involvement in any aspect of the old houses history.

A little background: I did software maintenance, development, and support for nearly forty years, until 2015, when I retired. The last half of that time I worked on web-based applications, defining the application and data base architecture, writing, testing, debugging (my forte), deploying and maintaining code to deliver business complex solutions. Yada, yada, yada... eyes glaze over... get on with it... The point is, I know a thing or two about developing and supporting complex web applications.

Over a year ago I created a listing on BoatTrader.com to sell my boat. I recall being "somewhat less than satisfied" with that experience, but I got through it quickly, after discovering the secrets to get past a few, let's say, quirks.

That listing was only up for a few weeks. Then for reasons not relevant here, I decided not to sell the boat, and deactivated the listing.

Time passed until a week ago Sunday...

I decided again to sell the boat. I assumed, er, hoped I could very easily reactivate my original listing, make appropriate changes and improvements, and then sit back and wait for leads. Off to a good start, my account id and password still worked. I logged in and clicked the "My Boats For Sale" link to display my one-and-only listing and open it. I clicked the (re)activate button and I filled out the next form, including, of course, my payment information. I submitted it. After a concerning delay, I got a message, and soon after an eMail, saying the listing was again active. Of course, the money was also IMMEDIATELY withdrawn from my PayPal account. No surprise there; the code that takes your money always work flawlessly. I then tried to update the listing.

So good, so far, or so I thought.

I navigated to and displayed the listing to edit it. The 'edit this listing' button was inactive, that is, when I tried to select (left-click) it nothing happened. Oddly though, the '(re)activate' button was still active. I thought to give the application the benefit of doubt, after all, how could such a fundamental use case fail so miserably?.I thought I might have overlooked a step. So clicked the re-activate button again, and the same form as before was displayed -- unchanged -- with all the same fields and buttons appropriate for activating an inactive listing. WTF? Not wanting to risk them taking ~$250 again, I didn't try to submit the new activation request.

It was time for me to call Boat Trader support, but I could not find the support phone number anywhere on their website. After looking much too long with no love, I decided to GTS. I soon found the number, NOT on their website. [I later discovered that it is prominently displayed on a listing when in edit mode, which was then useless to me because my problem it that I can't open the listing in edit mode. Catch-22 much.]

I called the number and followed the prompts to support, then waited... waited... waited... until finally the repeating obnoxious message changed, basically telling me I have waited too long, -- DUH, I knew that -- then a beep, then dead silence. I did not realize I was, which I discovered too late, supposed to leave a message so I hung up.

I called back and chose the option to leave a message with support. I left my name, number, a brief description of my problem, and saying they must leave a message if they get my phone mail, otherwise I would not immediately know about call, let alone return it.

The good news here is tried to contact me three times the next day -- A for effort -- but, true to form, left not one messages -- so a big F for lack of attention to detail. I did not discover the missed calls until the next morning, when I could only surmise the calls were from them, having only weak similarity to their support number. I called the number from which I received the calls. I don't recall the exact message I got but the gist of it was that that number did not accept calls. [Has anybody there actually taken the time to think this through? It borders on being absurd.]

I called back, finally reached a human, and described the problem. They put me on hold to fiddle with something, and came back on after only a couple of minutes. They asked me to try it again but it still did not work. They said they would escalate the problem to the I/T folks and let me know when it w"

"Listed my boat on boat trader for six weeks now and the only people I here from are scammers that want to send me a money order for someone else. I think everyone left Craigslist and came here. Just a waste of your money listing a boat on boat trader "

"Ditto to all the negative posts about scammers who, like barnacles, seem to cling to every boat listing. That certainly was my experience. 12/12 SCAM lead inquiries, not a single real buyer. This company needs to be looked into by a BBB. SAVE YOUR MONEY AND DO NOT USE!"

"Using Boattrader to sell a boat generates all sorts of spam. I contacted them and they said they were working to correct this problem, but at who's expense. Will not renew and highly suggest you do not use this site. They aren't worth one star!"

"Daily scam emails. I have reported two emails. I asked technical support to edit my listing. No response. I used boattrader 10 years ago to sell my last boat with success. Not this time. Go elswhere."

"Don’t waste your money on this website. Not a single actual buyer. Just 4 to 5 scammers sending from multiple addresses"

"Well. I found out the hard way, I listed my boat on BT.. Day two the flood gates opened and the scammers united.. omg.. do not waste your time w Boat Trader "

"Expensive and all I get are scammers. There are no controls on this site. I have received more qualified leads from Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace and the Hulltruth. Not worth it. "

"i had a nice 2000 catamaran for sale at just $14,000 with new 115 outboard. i listed it mid to end of summer for 6 months in all that time i received only scam buyers that wanted to buy it without looking at it and mail me a certified check. What will happen is you deposit the check and at some point that check is fake and the bank will get check returned and your out your boat. so dumb as i was i listed my boat again spring for 2 months same thing. i had it listed on FB Market place and i sold it there. i suggest you don't use boat trader to sell you boat just use a local place. to sum up in 8 months of listing on Boat Trader i had no real legit person even contact me to ask a question at all on the boat. just many Scam people saying the same exact thing."

"After throwing $200 at Boattrader to list my boat I got several contacts. Unfortunately every single contact was a "SCAM". And then it went down hill from there. I've never seen a worst advertising - for sale website in my life. And in my opinion the company that owns/run Boattrader is totally aware that their online service is "GARBAGE". If anyone is thinking of listing their boat for sale I suggest Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. Both those sites are free and I did sell my boat through a Craigslist contact.

So if reviews mean anything - please stay away from Boattrader because its a "rip-off" service that only provides Scam Artists a chance to swindle your boat, money or both. You've been warned boat owners."

"all spam and scammers not one real lead so far. not what it use to be.."