“Now, in 2006…let’s say every wetsuit company offers the same deal.”
heck, there are too many wetsuit companies as it is. the sport can only support 3 or 4 worldwide. there are probably 4 times that many. i think it would be great, because the wheat would separate from the chaff, and the companies that ought to go out of business would.
in any case, that was certainly not my problem while at QR. cid cardoso’s policy is pretty much what our policy was. 14 days. certainly enough time to take two wetsuits to the pool/lake/ocean, try them both out once or twice, and you’re going to know which you like the best.
in most cases, tho, suits aren’t sold mail order. they’re sold brick & mortar. so, no problem returning the suit. no freight. easy. and the retailer shouldn’t complain. great margins, high ticket, no assembly, easy money. twice a year he sends returned wetsuits back to the manufacturer for credit.
we also had a 2yr, no-fault warranty. i got very angry phone calls from other wetsuit manufacturers, who thought we were making life very tough for them. i imagine we were, for those who made wetsuits with questionable structural integrity. my view was, if you were going to buy a wetsuit of mine, you had a reasonable assumption it would last at least two years.
once a lady called, very flustered, she’d put her husband’s post-race wetsuit in the dryer. out came a ball of plastic. we said “send it in.” she did. it fit in a very small box. we sent her out a new wetsuit. 8 years later that man (her husband) signed a sponsorship deal with us, $750,000 over two years, to become a title sponsor of a race series we were producing. he recalled the incident. we never knew who the customer was, we were just honoring the warranty.
good service is nice. over-the-top service is another thing altogether, and it will come back to you.
