I have a Patagonia SST rain jacket (actually, I have 2 of them) that developed leaks this past summer, and I noticed that the tape was coming off many of the interior seams. So, I called Patagonia’s customer service and the guy told me to return the jacket to their return center in Reno, NV, which I did several weeks ago.
I hadn’t heard a word from them since returning my jacket, although I could see from my Post Office Delivery Confirmation that the package was delivered to them on 10/14.
I called Patagonia’s customer service again yesterday to see what the status was of my jacket. The woman I spoke with said that they haven’t even opened any incoming cusotmer returns since 10/11, and it would probably be another 6 weeks after that until they determine what to do with my jacket. It could be 3 months or more until, or if, I get my jacket repaired/replaced/returned, or whatever action they decided to take.
I wish I would have known that before sending them my jacket back, becuase I would have returned it to the shop I bought it from for a refund of my purchase price, which is one of their warranty provisions.
Anyway, I told the customer service woman that I spoke with yesterday that this will be the last Patagonia product I ever buy. As an aside, she said they have been having a disproportionate number of problems with their SST’s. I own lots of Patagonia products, and this is the first time I’ve ever returned any of them.
At least with Simms, when I called them this past summer about returning a pair of waders for repair, they told me up front how long the repair would probably take, and when I dropped them off in person in Bozeman, the woman I gave them to offered me my choice of 1 of 3 nice Simms hats for free! Now, that’s how to keep longtime customers returning to buy more of their products. My next rain jacket purchase will be from Simms.
Patagonia is an off shoot of the Great Pacific Iron Works started by Yvon Chouinard in the early 70’s. GPI made rock climbing pitons and other climbing related gear of extrememly high quality. Yvon’s first start at clothing with making the immataion fleece lined jackets, etc. with recycled plastic milk jugs. Of course the rest is history. I believe Yvon is still the owner of the two companies. You might try contacting him directly. I would google GPI for address, etc. I knew and climbed with Yvon in Oregon back in those early years, he is a very nice man and I am sure would be intrested in your plight. Good luck, Jonezee
I was familair with the company’s history and Yvon Chouinard, but I didn’t, of course, know you knew and climbed with him back in the day. That’s interesting!
I’m sure he’s got a 100,000 customers a day and can’t take everybody’s call, so I’ll probably wait awhile to see how this works out. But if I don’t hear from them on the status of my return within the next couple weeks, you can be sure I’ll be on the phone again – I’ve heard that other people had a couple week turnaround on their past returns to Patagonia, so maybe this is an especially busy time for them for whatever reason.
I am not a Simms fan. We have two of the jackets, and since we live on and fish saltwater I would not expect their zippers to be made of inferior metals which corrode in the presense of saltwater. They did replace them (the zippers) with more metal ones. Plastic would have worked very nicely…which I suggested when I sent them in. They did do the job promptly.
Chota makes much better quality, at less cost too.