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I’ve owned Summer Breeze, my 1978 Seafarer 26’ for about a year now.  One of my first observations was the relative disarray of the electrical panel as owner after owner had modified the system.  I cleaned it up enough for safety (I think) before last seasons cruising but I’ve been harboring a desire to make some sort of overhaul.  Being an obsessive online comparison shopper I looked long and hard for the materials I was looking for including; Defender Marine, West Marine, Amazon.com, GenuinedealZ and others.  Throw in a couple visits to radio shack and Washington Marina here locally and it rounds out a roughly 2 month on-again, off-again search.

I ended up going with GenuinedealZ for the cabling (I’ll provide a quick review for this site seperately) but for the following items I decided on oceanelectronics;

• Paneltronics Fuse panel
• Blue Sea bus bar’s
• Blue Sea Voltmeter
• Blue Sea Ammeter
• Poly Planar MP3 Amp + Speakers

The deciding factor was of course cost, I believe I saved between 10-40% off the next nearest price on each of the items listed.  The ordering experience unfortunately has ‘cost’ alot in time and patience…  here is my timeline;

• 3 May – Order placed, all items reported on website as ‘usually ships the same business day’
• 3 May – email confirmation of order with link for order status, when checked the link takes you to a order status page. my page was blank other than my order number.
• 4-6 May – Order status website remained unchanged, no further communication from oceanelectronics.com
• 6 May – I emailed ‘sales@oceanelectronics.com’ questioning the status of my order. No Response.
• 7 May – I called the oceanelectronics 800 #, and local #’s. I left a message referencing my order number and my email of the night before.  No Response.
• 10 May – 0928 – Another email, more sternly worded but polite requesting status and stating my attempts to contact.  Followed up by 2 more phonecalls during the day, to the sales, tech support, personnel directory options on there phone system.
• 10 May – 1821 – Mark from ocean electronics emailed me back assuring me that my credit card had not been charged (I mistakenly thought it had at that point) and informed me that one of the bus bars I had ordered was out of stock and was holding up the shipment.  I directed him to cancel the bus bar and send the rest. Mark replied at 2051 to say that it would be shipped in the morning and arrive within 1-2 business days (even though I only paid for ground shipping)
• 12 May – 1518 – Mark emailed again stating that another item (the Poly Planar) was out of stock and not expected in till 5/17-5/24.  I replied that he should send what was ready now and the rest later. I also requested consideration of removing the shipping fee’s based on the delays and mismanagement of my order. Mark replied (politely) that the margins involved did not allow him to remove any shipping fees and stated that my order would go out the next day and my account would be charged $177.91, the second part would go out when it was ready and the I would be charged the remaining  $124.93.
• 13 May – My credit card was charged $124.93, and I received an automated shipping notice from oceanelectronics.com stating that my full original order ($294.89) had shipped.
• 14 May – My full order arrived, in two packages.  All items were as described and in good condition. The remaining balance was charged to my credit card the same day and I never heard back from oceanelectronics.com

This is pretty rambling and long at this point so to sum it up and finish off, would I buy from oceanelectronics.com again…. yes probably.  Because cost is the biggest factor for me, however I would not base any timelines on timely arrival of an order from them. I am also not happy with the promptness or accuracy of their customer service.   It also really bothered me that it was impossible to get anyone from the company on the phone, it leaves me with the impression it is being operated out of a basement or garage.  Buyer beware!