I looked in on this thread briefly this morning but am just sitting back down to the computer. At that time, I guess I read the Winston email more thoroughly than I had before and reached the same conclusion already posted by Utah David. It appears to be a bit of "form email" with a section where the person on Winston's end is supposed to type in the number of sections of each type, as applicable, that they're replacing. That being said, if that's the entirety of the email, I'll agree with Hap and say that it's definitely cryptic. While I've defended Winston's actions to some degree with this, I'll also say they get low marks on several counts in my opinion for how they apparently handled this, and I think it's representative of how companies often don't realize the impact of little things like these on customers' perceptions. Weeks without response is poor. A very brief, impersonal, very poorly laid out email is also asking for trouble and isn't going to do a thing to generate any goodwill. If they can't take the time to generate an entirely original email, which I understand, how about at least adding a little more clarity and maybe just a touch of feigned kindness to the text they're currently using? Hopefully there was at least some "Dear Valued Winston Customer" stuff at the beginning, but when it came to the line in question, they'd do themselves a favor by preceeding it with something like "Sections repaired/replaced (no number indicates no repairs to that section): "

We've probably all experienced companies from time to time that get little things like this right and gain goodwill for stuff that didn't take much more time to send out than what Winston did. I've read plenty over the years that suggests Winston is a smaller shop than one might expect, and I'm sure they're not rolling in the dough any more than other fly fishing manufacturers, but these kinds of details are really more about a difference in approach than they are about additional resources. It's their option whether they want to handle out-of-warranty repairs with a TFO-type benevolence toward the consumer or whether they want to load up on the pricing of those repairs, but little and/or poor communication on the subject is not as easily dismissed. I have rods from a variety of manufacturers and I'm such a fan of my 6 wt. BIIX that it will probably end up being one of those "pry it from my cold, dead hands" rods, but this story will make even me a bit more wary if I wind up having to deal with the company for any repairs. Too bad.