Listers - fair warning - I got deceived today into paying 3X what I needed to for USCG documentation renewal. I received a letter via USPS from an entity named "U.S. Vessel Documentation", domain name uscgdocumentation.us, titled "Vessel Renewal Courtesy Notice". As I'm sure the sender intended, I mistook the letter as being from the United States Coast Guard National Vessel Documentation Center, reminding me to renew my Certificate of Documentation. It's been on my mind that my CoD is expiring soon, and I've been expecting a reminder.
So I went to uscgdocumentation.us, filled out the renewal form, and submitted it. I was surprised to see the price was $75 - I'd remembered the renewal cost being ~$25 - but I thought "well, the Coast Guard must have raised their prices", and submitted the form anyway, with my credit card information. Somehow sometime after doing that, I noticed fine print at the very bottom of uscgdocumentation.us web pages, where you wouldn't even normally scroll or look, saying "U.S. Vessel Documentation is NOT the U.S. Coast Guard or the National Vessel Documentation Center; we are a third party agency that handles USCG Documentation processing to NVDC." So then I went to the real USCG NVDC website, https://www.uscg.mil/nvdc/default.asp, where I applied for an exchange of the CoD last year when I bought Grenadine (since she was previously USCG-documented), and confirmed their renewal fee is only $26 and you can file for renewal online right there. At that point I realized I'd been had, and immediately requested cancellation of my renewal order from that company, in writing, and in voice mail, and filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and the USGC NVDC about "U.S. Vessel Documentation", and contacted my credit card company to block the charge from this merchant. I'm now in the process of posting about this experience on sailing-related forums I've visited. If you own a USCG-documented vessel, *DO NOT* do business through the deceitful company uscgdocumentation.us, unless you don't mind paying 3X the cost of something you could do directly though https://www.uscg.mil/nvdc/default.asp . These "U.S. Vessel Documentation" people are predatory. I've posted the letter I received, and an email exchange I had with this company, at https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-NqAxQ6JxFTeU1HcDZKTWdiQzA . Cheers, Randy Stafford S/V Grenadine C&C 30-1 #7 Ken Caryl, CO
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