Over the years, I’ve purchased my fair share of outdoor gear. Some of the customer service experiences have been outstanding while others have been decidedly less than outstanding. On the retailer side, Nordstrom comes to mind as a retailer who puts the customer first, no questions asked. Their service is always impeccable and they will do all they can to make sure you’re satisfied. For outdoor retailers, Backcountry.com is the top-of-the-heap with a lifetime 100% satisfaction guarantee… no matter what.

If you take that satisfaction guarantee up one level to the product manufacturers, the warranties and customer service vary widely. Some manufacturers will take excellent care of you to ensure loyalty and satisfaction, while others can display serious lapses in understanding customer loyalty at all.

I recently had two vastly different experiences with two major outdoor gear brands: Patagonia and Race Face. Lets see how they compare.

The Good: Patagonia

The Issue: Broken jute lacing on the Patagonia Clover shoes

The Details: I purchased a pair of Patagonia Clover shoes for my wife last Christmas. She wore the shoes as indoor shoes around the house because we have lots of tile. After about six months of use, the braided jute laces broke on both shoes. Though we purchased the shoes at Backcountry.com and could have simply returned them, I thought I’d ping Patagonia to see how they would handle the situation.

My email to Patagonia Customer Service at 9:30 am on September 30:

I purchased a pair of Women’s Clover slides for my wife a few months back.  She loves them, but the jute side lacing has now broken on both shoes. Do you have replacements available?  Is there an alternative lacing that you recommend?  If you can send replacements, that would be
ideal. Thanks!

I got a simple response from Patagonia Customer Service at 2:00 pm that same day:

We will send out the replacement laces tomorrow.

Have a good day!

A couple of days later and I had two new jute laces to re-lace my wife’s shoes. I’m a happy camper and my wife thinks I’m a hero for fixing her shoes. Kudos all around.

The Bad: Race Face

The Issue: A bent bolt on the faceplate of my brand new Race Face Evolve AM stem (notice only 3 bolts)

The Details: I purchased a Santa Cruz Blur LT from the factory for product testing. When the bike arrived, the stem was loosely attached to the steerer tube of the fork with the faceplate bolts loosely in place. This is a standard shipping arrangement, so it’s typically no big deal. Well, somewhere along the line (I’m guessing when Santa Cruz boxed it up), one of the four bolts got bent.

I thought it would be no big deal to contact Race Face and have them re-send a single bolt. I mean people must lose those bolts all the time, they’re bound to have a few hundred of them just sitting around ready for shipment. As it turned out, that’s not the reality.

I sent an email to Race Face Customer Service on July 25:

I just got a Santa Cruz Blur LT shipped from Santa Cruz to me for testing.  Unfortunately, one of the four bolts on the front of the Evolve XC stem was bent in shipping, or was bent inadvertently prior to boxing things up.

The four front bolts were just loosely screwed into the body of the stem, so they were sticking out pretty far and the one that was bent was a lower bolt.  Seems like it just got whacked against something causing it to be bent.  I didn’t notice it until I started clamping down the bars and that bolt was going in all screwy.

Any chance I could get a new bolt?  My address is below. Thanks!

Here’s the response I got from Race Face on July 29:

Sorry to hear that your stem got damaged. I am afraid that we don’t hold stock of bolts here. They come with the stems which are manufactured in the Far East. The bolts they use are standard M4 bolts. Your local bike shop or hardware store should be able to sort you out with one. Thanks for choosing RaceFace.

Bummer. OK so, I simply swap out the Race Face stem for a Syncros one I had on-hand and continue riding the new Blur LT thinking I’ll stop at my local shop and The Home Depot at some point and get a new bolt. After all, an M4 bolt should be easy enough to find–according to Race Face.

When I finally got around to it, I stop at the first bike shop to see if they had a bolt. They searched and searched to no avail. So, I thought I’d hit Home Depot. I had no luck there either. One more bike shop and I had struck out three times.

At this point, I was pretty miffed that Race Face would leave me hanging over a stupid $0.05 bolt. So, I sent them another email on October 6:

I know I sent this request several months ago.  I was a little floored when you guys didn’t have any M4 bolts on-hand to ship out to me.  I slapped another stem on the test bike and have been OK with it until now that I want to put the original stem on there.

So, I went to my local bike shop… no dice. Went to Home Depot… no dice.  I don’t have time to keep running around for a simple bolt that I’m sure you’ve got there on-hand.

Is there someone I can talk to about this because it’s completely unacceptable that you don’t have a replacement bolt.  Come on guys… you can do better than this. Definitely not a good example of primo customer service.

Should you find one, my address is below.

Here’s the response I got on October 10 from Race Face:

Our Evolve XC stems are manufactured & assembled in Taiwan, hence we do not have a huge stock of spare bolts. Even if we had a load to send you, the problem we have with sending small parts across the border is that US customs always questions them (I guess they think we’re building a bomb piece by piece or something) & they never get delivered.

It’s very unusual that you can’t find an M4 bolt. Most bike shops have tons of them.

I can put one in the post to you no problem, but I’d be surprised if it makes it across the border.

That was October 10 and I’ve never received the M4 bolt. Maybe I should talk to someone at US Customs, who I’m sure has a lifetime supply of M4 bolts? Umm yeah…

Lessons Learned in Customer Service

The reality is that each of these companies had an opportunity to provide excellent customer service–no matter what. Patagonia simply got it done quickly and courteously while Race Face seems like they don’t know how to do business in North America and can’t seem to provide quality customer service over a $0.05 part.

The fact that they can’t even ship parts across the border without customs snuffing them out is absurd. There are hundreds of legitimate companies who ship products and small parts across the border every single day–their businesses depend on it. If Race Face cared enough, they would do everything in their power to ensure I got a stinking bolt so I would be a satisfied customer, but they didn’t.

So, now I have a nice Evolve AM paperweight to remind me of how not to treat my customers. Thanks Race Face!