Price Gauging at ACI Dubrovnik

We made the mistake to winter our SY at ACI Dubrovnik for the 2022/23 season and signed a 12 month contract for storage on land.

The rate for a 58 ft yacht was €8,534 for a 12 months contract or €711 per month plus €468 for a steel cradle or €39 per month.

Over the course of the winter, we decided to shift our sailing season to late summer and requested a quote for a 2 month extension to our contract from 12 to 14 months. We have been yachties for more than 20 years and at every boat yard we have been to around the world, the longer we stayed the lower the price per month/day was. Further on land storage in July and August in this part of the world is generally quite cheap because yards are empty and welcome the business. On that basis we expected ACI to extend our contract at a rate not to exceed the monthly rate we were paying.

As it turn out ACI took the position that the extension was a brand new short term contract without any consideration for the ongoing relationship. The quote for the extension was €1.006 per month, a 41% increase while the cradle was quoted at €102 per month, a 160% increase. Again it is worth noting that the extension was for July and August when the yard was virtually empty and cradles laid abandoned on the yard grounds.

I initially thought this was an inadvertent mistake by a front desk person but the consistent reply I received going up the chain was: You are asking for a 2 months extension and « our policy » is to quote based on our monthly rate. If you want the annual rate, sign a new annual contract full stop. I emailed the marina manager, a man by the name of Leo Ajdukovic, to voice my concern without ever getting a reply. I suppose the man is so busy he can’t be bothered dealing with pesky customers.

I was so taken back I considered asking a delivery company to move our yacht but that of would have been considerably more expensive. Of course this is exactly what the management of ACI is counting on. We were captive customers, they could squeeze us, never mind if they infuriated a good customer in the process.

To make matters worse we realized that ACI Dubrovnik offers no gardiennage and very limited technical service on site. As an example, our sails were taken down by the only Sailmaker in the area who stored them without rinsing and drying them. They came back infested with mold to the point they will need to be replaced. The same individual was paid to keep an eye on our boat cover and effect the necessary repairs if it suffered wind damage. For sure, the invoices came our way but the service did not and we found our teak deck more damaged than anything we had seen in all prior years combined. The yard is so exposed to the Bora (prevailing wind in Croatia) that the pressure of the wind on our cover bent all our deck stanchions on the side exposed to the wind.

If that wasn’t enough, upon launch the proper travel lift was down (ACI charged us € 1,100 for haul out-in, substantially more than we ever paid before) and consequently our yacht was launched with a lift that was way too small. We had to not only remove our back stay but also the boom topping lift. The lift was so small its cross beam extended above our boom and damage occurred in the process. Of course no attention was given to the cleanliness of the lift belts. They laid dirty on the ground right before use and a number of deep scratches found their way in our gel coat.

Despite all this, the ACI staff asked us several times if we intended on coming back next season which goes to show the disconnect with anything that resembles reality.

I did some research and found that ACI d.d. recently listed its shares on the Zagreb Stock Exchange, and that 78.58% of the shares are still owned by the Republic of Croatia. Yet the strategy laid out in its annual publications is all about maximizing profit without any mention of the public utility nature of their facilities which is interesting for a company controlled by the Republic. Their CFO was recently quoted saying: “In the first nine months of this year, ACI achieved the highest revenues in the amount of HRK 194.7 million, the highest EBITDA of HRK 95.4 million and the highest gross profit of HRK 44.7 million in its almost forty-year history”. Good for them I suppose.

Needles to say that based on our experience we will stay as far away as we can from any and all ACI facilities.