Boattracs proves worthless in first emergency
Well we just had the first real emergency on board my own boat since we were forced to install and pay for the ridiculously expensive Boattracs service. When we put the thing on there, one of the ways I justified it to myself and forced myself to accept the fact we were being treated like criminals and forced to carry these things was to tell myself, “Well, at least we’ll have them in case of an emergency.”
Right.
My boat just broke a shaft offshore. This put them out of commission and gave a relatively inexperienced Captain a bit of worry regarding water coming in the boat, etc.
He usually communicates with me directly using the freeform interface between the boat and the Boattracs web site, the QTRACS site. I, however, was out of town when it happened and he wasn’t getting any response from me so he tried to send an email to the home email address of the person who owns the only other boat the system is currently “authorized” to communicate directly with.
The message he sent began this way:
SUBJECT:SHAFT BROKE TAKING SOME WATER MESSAGE:NOT ALOT BUT WILL NEED HELP
OK, not a MAYDAY or anything, but obviously a cry for help, right? What was Boattracs response? Did they call me? Did they forward along the message to the address in the address field? No, they sent him this message:
** YOUR VESSEL IS NOT AUTHORIZED
** TO SEND BOAT-TO-EMAIL MESSAGES
** TO THE SPECIFIED RECIPIENT
Now, I realize that the system they have in place requiring you to authorize communications beforehand is put there to help keep the ridiculously high bills from skyrocketing even more than they already do if you actually use the system. I mean, in a recent month a total of ten short messages through the system doubled my bill. However, I believe from personal experience with the thing that every email is personally read, or at least scanned, by a human being and handled from there. I’ve sent messages that have generated a surprise personal response from one of the system monitors. One of those system monitors, I believe, had to read that message from my boat:
SUBJECT:SHAFT BROKE TAKING SOME WATER MESSAGE:NOT ALOT BUT WILL NEED HELP
…and then make a decision not to send the message because the procedure for authorizing that email address was not in place. Had to make a decision to send that return message to the boat “Sorry, you don’t have permission to have this emergency” and then drop the matter.
Yessiree Bob. Just gives me a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that such intelligent and caring response is available just a keyboard away from the helm.
