Ski gear warranty policies

So I had an interesting day yesterday.  As most of you know, I live in Denver and love skiing.  However my schedule really only lets me get 10-12 days in a year.

Back in 2010 I bought a Patagonia ski jacket and pants, been wearing them for years.  I noticed that the Patagonia H2No water proofing was turning into H2Yes! on the jacket, and H2Maybe on the pants after the season previous to last.  Figured it was time for a new jacket, didn't even think about a warranty on the Patagonia stuff since it was so old.

So I spent a ton of money and bought an arcteryx jacket.  I wore it last season and this weekend, so one season really.  Noticed it had a split seam on the right pocket, you can see where the stitches pulled out.  Ok, figured no problem, this is a clear manufacture defect, arcteryx will give me a new jacket.

Drive 30 minutes to the only arcteryx store in town, pay for parking at the mall, go in and get told I need to submit a claim on their website, upload pictures and then send it in for repair.  Uh, really?  For an insanely expensive jacket that's basically new?  Yup, they were totally unwilling to help at all.  So now I'm all pissed off with wasting over an hour of my time and having gear that is f'ed up at the beginning of ski season.

Once home I google for the regional reps info, get a name but not contact info.  So I call the arcteryx store in Boulder, which is an hour away from me.  Apparently they also have a repair center there.  Explain that I want the Gm's name, gal asks me why, so I tell her the story.  She gets it and says she'll talk to people up the chain for me and see if she can get me a voucher for a new jacket and promises to call me back in a few hours.  Ok, that's a start.  I wait till a few hours after she's said she'd call me and call her back.  She apologizes and asks me if for sure it's a split seam vs a tear.  I tell her it definitely is a split seam and she's says as long as that's the case, she'll get me a voucher.  Sweet!  Why the F couldn't my local store do that?!  They saw it in person and verified it was a split seam.  Now I have to drive 2 hours round trip to the Boulder store to get it taken care of. 

I was telling my sister this and she told me about her friend who had an old Patagonia jacket with an issue and the store just gave him a new one!  Whoa, really?  So I call my local Patagonia store and tell them what's happening with my pants/jacket.  They tell me to bring them in, most likely they'll give me new ones.  For gear that's 12 years old!  Totally blown away by that, really unexpected.  Wish I'd checked with them before buying this arcteryx jacket.

So here are two well regarded outdoor clothing companies, one whose warranty policy is amazing, the while the others is BS.  I won't be buying any more arcteryx gear, that's for sure.  If they'd give me a refund vs a voucher I'd just drop the jacket on their counter and never deal with them again.

Speculation but based on my many past years in the cell phone industry...

Is the Denver store really a corp owned store? Sure, it sells only that brand but could be Third party owned ( like franchise.). Since they don't want to eat the problem out of their pocket to only have corp deny it, they force you to take it up with corp...the website. 

The Boulder repair store could actually be corp owned but even if not, has greater understanding of what corp will accept (due to their repair nature.)

Agreed, one has a better policy/process than the other.

In the cell phone game the minority of stores are corp owned (though they may appear to be.). In some cell brands zero are corp owned.  Very common that the non-corp stores are there to gain customers but are powerless to really support customers or solve problems. Corp wants control of who's "giving things away" like credits, returns or refunds.

In reply to John Welsh :

It's possible but it sounded like they were both corp stores, it's just that the Boulder store has the repair center on site so they can assess damage there and potentially decide to replace it.  It would've been nice if the Denver store had called the Boulder store, tell them they've got a jacket with a visibly split seam and ask if can they replace it.  Instead I had to do it and now have to drive to Boulder and handle it.

I'm always amazed when high end gear companies don't treat customers well. If you had a good experience you could have been a life long customer. Instead it's over almost before it began. Ridiculous. 

In reply to dculberson :

I agree.  I wasn't expecting the level of service I hope to get from Patagonia, but I sure wasn't expecting to be told I'd need to send my jacket back to Arcteryx to get fixed when it's basically new.  I mean, REI will give you a refund back for anything you buy within the first year for any reason.  If one of their retailers is doing that, I expect at least that level of service from the manufacter

I walked into a The North Face store once to buy a jacket. The lady there at the register noticed my old worn out windbreaker with the brand coming off and told me to go to the rack and pick another one without me saying anything. Im a customer for life now. 

Anyways, the worst part of this story is that you had to pay to park at the mall?? Lol, nuts. 

Both companies are top notch, try getting anything out of the next tier down. Some of the warranties will be backed by the fabric mfg as well so the exact model will be important. Anything with Gore-Tex will be backed for its useable life and we just did a return on a 7yo jacket with no hassle other than documentation. 

I've never personally had to go through the return/repair process with either, but stories from friends/family and online seems to match yours (for both Patagonia and Arcteryx). Both make excellent gear, but Arcteryx is even pricier than patagonia, no excuse for poor customer service. 

On paper the arcteryx warranty is pretty non-comforting for such high end gear. They state it's good for the "Practical Product Lifespan" & define it as "Practical product Lifespan will be determined in the reasonable discretion of an authorized Arc’teryx Customer Service representative who shall take into account at least the following factors: the type and nature of the product, the nature of the use of the product, nature of the product issue involved, and age of the product." I had to google it, I couldn't find it directly on the website. 

One of my Arcteryx jackets is coming up on 12+ years of hard use (and shows it). There's rips everywhere, insulation is packed out, and the seams are splitting. No complaints about how it's held up, but if it was from Patagonia and I felt it should last longer, I bet they would replace it no questions asked. I did try and get it repaired at one point (zipper broke), Arcteryx wanted me to send it to Canada and had a 12+ week turnaround, I took it to a local talior instead. That was a few years ago, i'm not sure if they had the boulder repair center at that point.

PSA: Not that this applies to your new jacket, but for general seam-sealed outdoor gear, wash it regularly (with proper tech wash, of course). I always thought of goretext (& other waterproof fabrics) as being damaged by the washing process, but the real killer is oils/sweat breaking down the seam glue. 

In reply to Paul_VR6 (Forum Supporter) :

Yes, using the Goretex warranty was going to be my next avenue if Arcteryx didn't step up, as the jacket is Goretex.

In reply to Fupdiggity (Forum Supporter) :

When I mentioned a 6 week turn around time for repairs with the Arcteryx people they didn't disagree with me.  So if I sent the coat in for repair, I wouldn't have it for the rest of the season really.  That's just not good customer service.  They made it sound like they have no power to decide anything, where that policy you quoted sure makes it sound like they do.

Dunno, John may be right in that you have to take it to an Arcteryx store/repair center so they can assess it.  Even with that, their warranty policy blows in comparison to Patagonia's.

Paul_VR6 (Forum Supporter) said:

Both companies are top notch, try getting anything out of the next tier down.

Sometimes the next tier down has better warranty service. The top notch companies can get a little high on their own supply, as the good doc has found out.

One example is Grohe faucets. I have a $650 kitchen faucet where the warranty service was so bad I ended up swapping it out for a lower line brand. Any time I have needed service from Moen, Sterling, or Kohler they've been amazing. But Grohe - at 2x the cost - can barely give you the time of day.

Poor customer service doesn't surprise me. Arcteryx is now owned by a massive Chinese company, Anta Sports (which, incidentally, refused to leave Russia when they invaded Ukraine; maybe that has since changed - it was in the news a while ago).

When their gear was sewn in Canada, it was absolutely worth the cost. I own some amazing, CDN-made pants from them, but they are wearing out after 12+ years and everything I've read is that their new stuff is comparatively E36 M3. 

Patagonia continues to have awesome service - I recently dealt with them for a softshell jacket with failing adhesive in the hood and sleeves. But their stuff isn't designed as well anymore - I have a hardshell of theirs that I can barely turn my head a quarter turn in when the hood is up - this is basic stuff for a jacket purportedly designed for real use in the backcountry, not trips to Starbucks. And though they were good about the adhesive failing, it still failed, pretty spectacularly. I have stuff I bought from them in the early 80s that is still intact, plus a shirt I bought in the 90s that I've worn many hundreds of days and continue to wear most weekends. 

TL;DR Patagonia has great service, but their gear isn't as good as it used to be, IME 

dculberson said:

I'm always amazed when high end gear companies don't treat customers well. If you had a good experience you could have been a life long customer. Instead it's over almost before it began. Ridiculous. 

This^^^^^^^^

The mark up on that gear is crazy, it's not going to beeak the bank, it's a write off anyway....

The crux of the biskit is, The goodwill of a freebe will sell a lot of gear!

Im not a skier but if I bought gear.....  Pagatonia wins the prize.

While it is great that Patagonia has good customer service. More companies should strive to have service like was described in this thread.

That being said, it seems that Patagonia is no friend of Motorsports. In fact they seem to be quite the opposite. 

I will not be supporting their stance by buying their products. 

I have a wonderful customer support story from Vasque boots. In 19 86 I graduated high school and invested some of my hard-earned money in a pair of sundowner boots. I wore those things bald not one good a tread left on them. I was in the upper peninsula of Michigan in 1989 and stepped on a sharp Rock. The steel shank in the arch of the boot broke through the lining and poked my foot. Shame on me for doing something stupid. I went back to the store in Ann arbor Michigan, bivouac I believe. My intention was to buy a second pair. I told the salesman what happened and why I wanted another pair. I was happy with the boots I had no beef with the company. He said let me send these in let me see if I can get you a credit on this pair that is broken. 2 months later I received a second pair of boots gratis. My father was so impressed that he has bought nothing but v a s q u e boots since then.

I have some Patagonia jackets from the same era that have some tears and problems with zippers I'm thinking about sending them in

So drove thru rush hour traffic to Boulder.  Met the person I'd talked to yesterday, she took one look at the jacket and said, "Yep, that's a manufacturer defect, lets get you a voucher".  Why the F that couldn't have happened at my local store I have no idea.  Anyways, got the voucher and picked out a new coat.  Bonus is it's a model that wasn't around when I bought my old jacket and it's a bit less expensive, so I still have some credit left over for something else.

Bad news is it's not the color I wanted, they didn't have it in stock and couldn't get it to me before I go skiing this weekend, when it's going to be pretty cold.  Well, for Colorado at least.  I may call the Cherry Creek store to see if they have the color I want in stock and go exchange it.

Pic makes it look grey, but it's black.  Other choices were this very light blue/grey and a darker red, which is what I want.

drsmooth said:

While it is great that Patagonia has good customer service. More companies should strive to have service like was described in this thread.

That being said, it seems that Patagonia is no friend of Motorsports. In fact they seem to be quite the opposite. 

I will not be supporting their stance by buying their products. 

I don't see them as anti motorsports, though they are definitively pro humans not ruining earth as much as we have. It's quite a goal and would like companies like theirs to succeed. Gives some hope that capitalism can survive, and we collectively can benefit.

Cherry Creek store doesn't have it in red, its showing out of stock online.  Don't know if the Boulder store was able to see stock nationwide in stores and then have it sent to me or not.  Don't think I'm going to pursue it, I'm happy with the black color.  I'll update this on Sunday after I've gone to the Patagonia store to tell everyone what the outcome there was.

Ok, this morning I grabbed my Patagonia ski jacket and pants and went to their store.  The jacket is their H2No, the pants were actually Goretex, which explains why they've held up better.  Anyways, plopped them on the counter, very nice gal asked me what was up.  I mentioned that neither was totally waterproof anymore and she said, "No problem, we usually just replace the gear, or you can get a refund/credit."  So even though the gear is 10-13 years old, they're giving me new stuff!

Sweet!  They no longer make my pants anymore, which are an insulated Goretex set, but they had what felt like a fairly heavy goretex set and I'll just wear a heavier long underwear with them on a cold day.  The jacket is basically the same, they didn't have the color I wanted in stock but could get it sent to me from their Reno warehouse and I should have it in a week.  Which is fine since I have my Arcterx jacket and I'm not going skiing for another 2 weeks.

Interestingly, Arcterx is opening up a big store right across the street from the Patagonia store, so if I have any more issues with that arcteryx jacket hopefully that location can help me vs having to drive all the way to Boulder.

My final thoughts on all this is that Arcteryx charges a premium price for their gear but definitely doesn't back it up with service or warranty.  Patagonia offers a very similar quality product for substantially less and has a fabulous warranty.

So got home and was showing my wife my new Patagonia pants.  That's when I noticed that they gave me the wrong ones.  Argh!!  So after I dropped my son off at soccer practice I went back to the store, stood in line, then exchanged them for the ones I wanted to begin with.  Except they didn't have them in stock, so they're getting shipped to me along with the jacket.  I should've taken a closer look at the pants that morning.