Yup, I'm switching exclusively to Moosejaw until Backcountry is a little more reasonable here. Obviously they have to enforce their trademark to avoid losing it, but some of these lawsuits are egregious imo.
FYI - Moosejaw is now owned by Walmart, so if you're trying to ethically "vote with your dollars" it might not be the best choice.
I buy essentially all my gear from the REI co-op, who seem to have both customer-friendly return policies as well as genuine commitments to environmental standards for the gear they stock.
REI is my favorite place for outdoor gear. Return policies aren’t as good as they used to be. You can get around the return policies by buying high end gear. I had a goretex jacket where the membrane taping failed after 8 years and the manufacture replaced the jacket for free.
Almost everyone has cut back on their replacement guarantees. LL Bean is another company that used to basically have a no questions asked policy.
I'm not sure whether it's a case of more people arguably abusing the spirit if not the letter of the policy as part of a modern take everything you can mindset. Or if it's that more and more stuff is made in the same Chinese factories and they literally tend not to "make stuff like they used to."
"Increasingly, a small, but growing number of customers has been interpreting our guarantee well beyond its original intent. Some view it as a lifetime product replacement program, expecting refunds for heavily worn products used over many years. Others seek refunds for products that have been purchased through third parties, such as at yard sales."
Well, of course, LL Bean isn't going to say "And, besides, our stuff is a lot crappier than it used to be." Some people have been doing this sort of thing forever. Though I find it perfectly believable that it's become more common--admittedly an assumption at least somewhat rooted in generational stereotypes.
Yeah, but we all know jerks who've been pulling that scam with Craftsman for years too, and I believe it's a large part of what made them less profitable too.
Turns out that a "forever" guarantee lasts longer than shifting moral standards.
I know of at least one person who would routinely buy stuff and return it after a season of use to get a refund. That guy was a real asshole though. But still, people like him ruined it for the rest of us.
Sounds like a guy I knew who would "buy" a brand new TV just before the Super Bowl, and then return it immediately after.
This was before all consumer electronics were consolidated into a few chains, so he was able to go to a different place each year.
These days there are companies that monitor that sort of thing and will alert the stores when you try to return stuff. But considering the state of online shopping, I wonder if he's still doing it.
> I'm not sure whether it's a case of more people arguably abusing the spirit if not the letter of the policy as part of a modern take everything you can mindset.
I think that's the rationale they gave, and I believe them. My brother has pushed what I consider the moral limits of generous return policies a couple of times, and given what I've seen at REI scratch and dent sales, I think other people are as well.
I believe Nordstrom still has basically an unlimited return policy. They sell a surprising amount of outdoor gear too. Arcteryx, North Face, Patagonia, etc.
Most of the stuff in the stores is those brands fashion lines, but their website regularly has more outdoor focused gear. I even once bought a Snow Peak backpacking stove from them.
> I'm not sure whether it's a case of more people arguably abusing the spirit if not the letter of the policy as part of a modern take everything you can mindset.
That's probably a part of it, a long running joke in the skier community was that "REI is an acronym for Return Every Item."
That plus blatantly notably lower quality Chinese production probably put an end to it.
Weird. I've noticed a strong increase in the quality of their products over the past few years. I have a REI magma down bag from them and it's awesome. Their performance wear has taken a step up, too. I seriously considered a rain shell from them, but ended up buying a Mammut on sale.
One of the only real quality disappointments I've had with REI was fairly recently when about a 3 year old lightly-used camp sleeping pad started slow leaks from all over the pad. Obviously whatever material they used to keep the air on the inside had just broken down. I probably should have at least tried to return it but I couldn't be bothered. Looking online, I was far from the only person with this problem.
"For life" is such a misleading statement I'm surprised companies get away with using it without running into legal trouble. It most definitely does not mean that your jacket is guaranteed to last as long as you're alive. They are not talking about your life, they are talking about "useful life of a product", which can mean pretty much anything.
My ski jackets which are goretex easily last 10+ years. Membranes are things that usually fail. I had a raincoat membrane fail while I was in Thailand during the monsoon season. It was a cheap rain coat at a 1/3 the price of a goretex equivalent. REI wouldn’t take back the raincoat even though it was only 4 years old so I replaced it with goretex active coat which is still going strong though I burned a couple holes in it that I had to plug with wax. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for a waterproof membrane to last the life of garment. Most of my camping gear is 20 years old and still works fine.
I've had bad experiences with their garage sales, buying products that say "too heavy" or "didn't like fit" but are just broken. Like at least give products a look over, especially electronics that can't easily be tested by a customer in store. Spent like 3k one year at REI, then was sold broken products that they didn't take back. Dividends don't accumulate on sale products so their pricing isn't competitive - I think once the bubble popped for me I realized REI isn't special
Well, specifically, one that I remember was a solar charger. I couldn't exactly go outside and let it sit in the sun all day to see if it worked before buying. What set me off was when I asked them about it, they said, "hey its hit or miss. Actually we have another one next month, try your luck again!"
So I mean, its minor, and maybe I'm being petty, but it irritated me enough to stop buying gear there. Esp given how much I'd spent on winter camping gear the months before. Started trying to support local shops more where I can, and buying online elsewhere.
> REI is one of my favorite stores in the world. It's hard for me to come up with a reason not to like them.
That's easy. Pretty much every single non-REI branded item that they sell in the store is insanely marked up compared to what it can be bought in the brand's store.
Agreed. I've been a member for a while now and REI's standard prices are pretty average if not a little high, but they have enough really good sales during the year (plus the member discounts) to make up for anything you'd consider high price. Not to mention the garage sales can be a gold mine.
It is definitely the case for ski gear ( skis/boots ), bike gear, cold weather gear, helmets, backpacks, etc. Northface store? 25% off. REI? List price. Columbia store? 25% off. REI? List price. Patagonia store? 15% off. REI? List price. Atomic REI? List price in Feb. Atomic at EVO? 25% off in Jan. Yeti at REI? List price. Yeti pretty much anywhere else? 10% off.
People justify it because of the dividends gimmick. Hell, I fell the first year for it myself.
> No. Their prices are consistent with the MSRP of the brand name products they stock.
And their competitors base line is pretty much always MSRP - 10%. That's why REI pretty much never shows up on Slickdeals apart from their blow out, out of season sale.
To be honest, their return policy is still awesome. You can return things after a whole year of use. They changed it because people were abusing the return policy and treating it like a rental.
It makes sense that they stopped offering a lifetime policy. 1 year is still generous. They also offer price adjustments up to 2 weeks after purchase (if a sale starts, for example).
That’s the thing. A company like REI wants to do good by its customers, but a large enough fraction of them make it into a game. I knew people who’d buy something outgrow it and return it to buy the new thing they wanted. I mean, c’mon, but there you have it, the same old ugly reason we can’t have nice things for long. People abuse these niceties till they adjust or die.
yeah, well (and this might be a stretch for you to consider) maybe they reduced the return window because people like you expect every item to last indefinitely.
These days I put a real premium on how a product is supported after I purchase it.
I paid almost $200 for an Outdoor Research rain jacket back in 2017. Last month the zipper broke off, and they immediately sent me a replacement. Now I won't think twice about what brand I buy the next time anyone in my family needs a lightweight rain jacket.
I used to be a long-distance road cyclist, and I paid a premium for the Dura Ace brand for chains, cassettes, chainrings, shifters, etc. On two different occasions something failed in the 3rd year of use, and both times Shimano replaced the broken part under warranty. Had I gone with cheaper kit, I would have had a slightly less quality ride experience and would have been out the cash to buy replacements out of warranty.
I bought a pair of L.L.Bean boots 2 months before they suddenly dropped their lifetime replacement policy. Guess what brand of boots I'm not going to touch with a ten-foot pole now?
Finally, I owned a Tesla for almost 3 years. For the first year Tesla honored its warranty for about a dozen issues that came up. I was willing to work with them through the issues because of how responsive to the problems they were at first. By the time I was at year 3, they were refusing to fix anything -- most notably, a shudder in the half-shaft that happened under moderate acceleration. I immediately got rid of it and won't ever purchase another car from that company.
It's all about how you treat your customers after the sale. Shimano and Outdoor Research have a fan for life. L.L. Bean and Tesla have earned someone who now discourages others from purchasing their products.
FWIW, MSR and Osprey are tiptop as well, both have replaced products for me even though I was just looking for parts to fix it myself (MSR), or giving feedback on how a pack wore after 6 years of heavy use (osprey).
Maybe they just like to see their gear after some proper usage to see how it's holding up.
The only caveat seems to be that they now require you to have the original receipt, otherwise people would still be buying 30 year old clothing at garage sales and exchanging it (which is the reason they had to drop the lifetime guarantee to begin with).
Check out Let My People Go Surfing as well, he talks more about how they've discontinued certain colors because of the environmental/social effects of mining certain pigments/dyes. It's very inspirational. I fear for what might happen after he's gone. Yvon Chouinard is the ruthless visionary we need for adventure sports equipment, something like Steve Jobs was for tech.
As for returns, I'm not sure they're any "better" than REI, but I fully buy into their philosophy of "if it's broken, fix it" and "don't buy this jacket." They try to be the antithesis of fast fashion and consumerism. If your jacket's zipper or stitching fails after 10 years of taking you to incredible heights, and you feel entitled to a replacement, you are delusional. Either fix it, or pony up the dough for a new one. You're not just investing in a new piece of clothing when you exchange money for it, you are investing in the company and its continued craftsmanship, R&D and training of newcomers to keep making and improving things. And in Patagonia's case, lobbying for better standards environmentally and sociopolitically. Asking for a refund or replacement is basically a vote for offshoring, reduced quality, carelessness towards the environment, etc as far as I'm concerned.
They'll even repair gear made by others. Which is putting your money where your mouth is, if you ask me. They'd rather keep your gear, made by someone else, going than sell you new stuff.
> Obviously they have to enforce their trademark to avoid losing it
This is a commonly repeated myth. The circumstances in which you could even possibly lose control of a trademark in this way (genericization, abandonment) are very narrow and difficult to apply. For more context, try https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not...
Why not look for a local option for your gear? I understand that some equipment may not be available locally but surely you can find most of what you need. If their prices aren't competitive with online retailers, look at what else you get beyond the equipment such as customer service, repairs, etc.
Over the last few years I've been trying to shift my spending from online to local businesses. It's been a miserable failure. Hours and hours wasted trying to avoid the Amazons of the world, only to end up having to order online because local selection is basically non-existant. The town I'm in only has a population of 120k so I don't expect to be able to find niche items, but I've honestly been surprised at just how difficult it is to buy relatively high quality items at all in the local market.
Yup, the local markets often only cater to the entry-level, casual users. That's where their profit margins are. If you need something niche/higher-end your only options are to go online. Otherwise you get the usual response: "We don't have that in stock but can order it online for you. It should be here in 2 - 4 weeks."
That excessive delay probably isn't fundamental and probably represents an opportunity to improve logistics and get that down to 1-5 days depending on how niche and how centrally the customer is located.
Amazon is brilliant for charging the customer 120 bucks a year for shipping and not making them feel the pinch on each transaction.
>The town I'm in only has a population of 120k so I don't expect to be able to find niche items
This caught my eye: is 120,000 people considered a small market?
I grew up in a town of 5,000, work in a small city of 50,000 (which has plenty of amenities, including multiple independent outdoor sports stores) and now live in a village of 200 people.
There isn't a single ramen restaurant in this town. Nor is there any donut or ice cream shop that isn't a chain like Dunkin' Donuts or Cold Stone. The only outdoor store is a hunting store Gander Mountain or a sports oriented store like Dick's Sporting Goods. The only decent kitchen store is a Bed Bath and Beyond. The only "boutique" store I've found that I've found reason to go back to is a grill store, but even they didn't have something pretty basic like a flat burger press. Maybe Cedar Rapids, IA isn't a small market, but it doesn't feel like there are very many local options at all.
Sounds like it might be a demographic problem. Slightly larger town in Colorado here; we probably have 10-15 outdoor sports stores, and half are local.
Actually, I just checked again to make sure I wasn't a liar, and we did get a dedicated outdoor goods store but it wasn't until toward the end of last year. I did also finally get a leather repair shop for my boots who also moved in last year. Hopefully smaller retailers are recognizing a gap in the market and starting to move in. If someone wants to start a hipster ice cream or donut shop, the Cedar Rapids, IA market is all but uncontested.
You don't necessarily need to avoid ordering online to avoid giving money to the giant retail companies. A lot of the best small gear manufacturers sell their gear directly on their websites.
And with those new credit cards that allow you to spin up one time use numbers you don’t even really have to worry so much about a small businesses card handling operation getting hacked which is nice.
Not having a central point of failure for your checking account is a boon these days I think.
You often can't even find the best gear at the big box retail stores. Small companies like Gossamer Gear, Tarptent, etc. make some seriously fantastic outdoor gear. You can't find them without some looking, but it's totally worth it.
Yeah. And in the mountainous areas there's usually a good retailer nearby the local REI flagship. Seattle has like 3 or 4 that I can think of off the top of my head.
I will say that when I went to the local REI here the lady I worked with actually spent about an hour with me fitting a pair of backpacking boots and explaining how and why some of the boots would fail when I wore them. I learned more about my feet from her than from any of the other places I went.
You can get that kind of experience at a lot of the boutique alpine or backpacking stores though.
In the US, having a local REI is pretty close to the only good option. Or Cabela's for some types of gear; they're geared towards hunting/fishing. There are a few other local alternatives with various degrees and types of specialization. But not a lot--and they all tend to pivot more and more towards general clothing over time.
As for repairs, good luck. I took something into an REI recently to get repaired as I had done in the past and it was: "Nope. Don't do repairs any longer. Send it to a place in (somewhat ironically) Seattle."
Outdoor gear is an especially good way to shift your purchasing from online to supporting local retailers, specifically because their pricing is very competitive. Backcountry.com pricing isn't saving me any money vs my local gear stores.
The only problem is actually finding a good outdoor gear store - i'm lucky enough to live in a mountain resort town, so my options are pretty good, but many places simply don't have a local shop.
I can relate to that, I did live in a mountain town with some great local stores. However, I just moved to a larger city but further from the mountains and they have worse local options, at least that I have found.
I honestly tried to shop at Dick's, about a decade ago. (I have spent lots of money at e.g. REI [although I haven't lived near one recently] and Bass Pro in the past .) At Dick's, if I ever had a particular item in mind or a question about an item they did sell, whether that was for hunting, cycling, kayaking/canoeing, snowboarding, skating, whatever: I was always disappointed. So far as I can tell it exists mostly to sell high-marketing-spend branded athleisure apparel. Their recent public stand against 2A and the resulting drop in sales would fit with that...
My time, honestly. It takes a lot more time to stop by at a store and find what I'm looking for or pick up a package from customer service than to simply have it delivered to me with 2-day shipping.
I'm not sure why Walmart gets so much hate. They're not the most altruistic company in the world, but I don't remember ever hearing about them suing small companies for trademark BS like this. In fact, I can't recall ever hearing anything really awful about them, other than maybe staff being underpaid.
Compared to really despicable actions I've heard of from so many other behemoth companies, Walmart seems to be relatively benign. Some people complain about them putting small businesses out of business when they open up, but what do you expect when a large retailer opens up nearby and has a big economy-of-scale advantage? My main problem with them is that they tend to have a lot of cheap junk, and not a lot of better stuff, but what do you expect from a retailer that caters to the crowd that wants stuff as cheaply as possible? They also have kinda crappy, dirty stores many times, but again, look at their clientele. So I usually go to Target for that kind of shopping instead, and to Wegman's for other groceries that Target doesn't carry.
> They also have kinda crappy, dirty stores many times, but again, look at their clientele.
The shopping experience at Walmart is really only unpleasant in areas where the "Walmart is gross" meme has pervaded the local psyche enough to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. It probably doesn't help that local governments in such areas do everything they can to deny Walmart's permits and keep them relegated to "not in my backyard".
In most places, Walmart isn't any worse than any other major department store, and shopping there is near-universal. You're more likely to have an incident with another shopper at a place like Target simply because the shopper base that actively selects against Walmart in non-Walmart-hostile areas is much snootier.
This is just plain wrong. Not to far from where I live, there's a Walmart and a Target in the same shopping center. There's a huge, clear difference in shopping between the two. The clientele at Target is clearly more affluent, the store is cleaner and nicer, the carts are nicer and roll silently unlike the beat-up squeaky Walmart ones, I could go on and on. It has nothing to do with "permits" or NIMBY when the two stores are almost right next to each other. I've seen this in other places as well where Walmart and Target were not very far apart.
As for "incidents" with shoppers, I'm not sure what you're talking about there.
Appreciate the counter-anecdote. There is definitely some individual variance between locations depending on local management, overall demographic factors, etc. It wasn't my intention to suggest that every Walmart and every Target are always equally desirable shopping experiences. The main idea is that except in places where Walmart is specifically artificially constrained, it's just as likely to have a bad store or a good store as the next massive conglomerate. :)
Look into WalMart's operations in Mexico, where they've bribed officials into deliberately overlooking protective legislation for historical areas, just so they could get visible placement of stores to catch tourists.
Amongst many other not just questionable but reprehensible moves behind the scenes in many, many places. If they can find a way around the system, they will, and go beyond to bribe people into staying quiet about it.
Even after hearing how bad Amazon's fulfillment centers grind people down, I'd still buy from them before giving WalMart anything.
They're well known for abusing their monopsony power to force brands to offshore production and reduce quality of products.
First they take on a product line and become a big % of the company's sales, then they start tightening the screws and demanding price cuts. The manufacturer has to either give up a large fraction of their total sales or use cost-cutting measures like offshoring and materials substitution to reduce their cost so they can sell at the price Wal-Mart demands. Wal-Mart does this incrementally over time so the company has already started down the road by the time they realize what's being done.
This was a big part of the manufacturing offshoring movement of the last few decades. Of course one company isn't solely responsible for that trend, but Wal-Mart with their huge size was a significant part of it. This was before Amazon was a thing. Now the damage is done and everyone seems to be forgetting that Wal-Mart had a hand in it.
This isn't anything new with Walmart, and it's pretty obvious that's going to happen if one retailer becomes your main customer. Walmart isn't forcing anyone to sell through them, or even to have different product lines (one crappy one for Walmart, another for other retailers), or even different brands. Basically, if you want to sell stuff to Walmart buyers, this is what you need to agree to. If you want to be a higher-end company, then don't deal with Walmart.
Well, economies of scale and significant pressure on suppliers ("Do you want your product in the largest retailer in the world?") to reduce prices, even at the cost of quality. I've noticed many of their high-volume products are lower quality than the same brands at other shops.
I buy essentially all my gear from the REI co-op, who seem to have both customer-friendly return policies as well as genuine commitments to environmental standards for the gear they stock.