I am on here and taking my own personal time to warn others about Gulf Coast Spas. I bought a brand new Gulf Coast Cape Haze Spa from an authorized dealer back in 2002 and it was broken the instant it was installed. It would not heat. Then the blower motor went. Then the Spa Pack went. Then the heating element went again. Then Gulf Coast was involved with many law suits and switched locations in FL and changed phone numbers and manufacturers and basically left all of us existing customers up the creak and high and dry. The local dealer was useless. The local service company refused to work on anything made by Gulf Coast b/c Gulf Coast stopped paying them for warranty work...real classy move there let me tell ya...Then things got interesting.

About 2 years ago my tub started to crack...and crack and crack some more. I called down to FL (I am in MA) and got a hold of Fritzgerald Belot in their customer service dept and he proceeded to talk a great game as far as taking care of me...but then the truth came out...Their warranty, b/c it was a pro-rated lifetime warranty and not a real lifetime warranty, would not cover all my issues so the best, and I mean the best (Over a year to get here) they could come up with was this...Antonio Alexander, Fritz's boss, who was too much of a coward to get on the phone with me ever, reassigned Fritz, and stuck another poor girl, and then another nice tech, but both having no real authority to make a decision, to the case and I was offered the same pathetic deal Fritz had offered over a year ago...They wanted me to pay for a new tub and for shipping the old Tub back at a cost of $3,411.45 + $1,165.00 in shipping for a total of $4,576.45, which was actually $77.45 more/higher than if I actually bought the same brand new spa (Cool Nights Model 7000 ) from a stranger company/Authorized Dealer via the Web. Gulf Coast claimed this was b/c they had no actual policy in place with their dealer network to warranty out Spas and thus there was no way to avoid the insane shipping charges, and their costs were basically the difference...even though their dealers could sell the same tubs for less...which of course in business 101 makes ZERO sense. Obviously Antonio does not understand what customer service entails and what customer retention means to a company.

This is the abbreviated version of the Gulf Coast Spa Nightmare I went through. I now have a brand new Hot Springs Mallorca and could not be happier. Gulf Coast should be out of business and any one who buys a product from them is taking a major chances...Just look at all the reviews on line...the only good ones don't involve any interaction with their post sales warranty dept/customer service...b/c they don't apparently believe in either.