If you remember from back at Bazine, KS, one of our tent poles broke. The little coupler between the sections broke clean, Ahhh tempered aluminum. No big deal we were 2 days out of Salina were we would pick up a car and run back to Denver. There are plenty of REI’s there to get’r fixed up.
Well, seemed simple at the time. That was five days ago, I set up the tent yesterday only to have another pole break except not a coupler as before (I now have spare parts for that), the tube cracked, no parts to fix that. Not happy, but I bought it at REI no problem.
Got up this morning and started making phone calls to get this taken care of. Call REI customer service, very nice, not very helpful, tent model is not available in any store other than California. Tells me that it would take two weeks to get the tent to St. Louis but they don’t have any at the warehouse. If I want it faster I would have to pay for shipping! Oh, and he can’t handle store transfers. This guy won’t do anything and dumps me off on the Cal. store manager. Frustration!
Call Brentwoods store, not open yet, you Californians are still in bed. Call Mountain Hardware they’re still sleeping, doesn’t surprise me, given the quality of their tent. Bet you can guess I’m not any less frustrated, aye.
Call REI customer service back, I’m not as forgiving as I was on the first call, but still polite. The lady tells me “maybe the tent isn’t the right product for what I’m doing”. REALLY FRUSTRATED! So if the tent isn’t good for camping what the ((*& is it good for!!!!!
She sends me to customer service, thought I was talking to customer service!?!? Explain the situation again and as you might guess I’m not going to take no for an answer. We go to REI and pay a premium for premium customer service. This guy seems to get that. He’s suppose to call me back in a couple of hours, after he can get a hold of the Brentwood store and arrange a transfer. We’ll see.
The rub here is two things; I sewed a custom compression bag for this tent to fit the bike loading the way I want it, so I can’t just buy another tent. Second I purposely bought this tent for the trip because I didn’t want any problems during the trip and my other tent was a cheap $40.00 tent from Wal-mart. Seems the Wal-mart tent is actually made to camp with because I’ve had it for years without any problems.
One other note, Mo. still lets people smoke in restaurants. Cough, cough. Don’t realize it’s missing until it’s not.
Thanks for letting me whine, I feel much better. I need to finish my breakfast and get moving. Yikes, I’m trying to jamb it in too fast just to get going! I have to come up for air, must get going, muuuust breath, must get going. Gasp, gasp. What no phone service to up load this?? Cram in food faster to get outside for a connection. I feel like the comic strip Cathy.
Once again it’s after 10am and I’ve ridden 0.5 miles. Off to the trail I have high hopes of off highway peace and quiet.