My local experience!

Not going to point fingers or name drop. This is not a flame the company so I can get something free, just venting. A while back I read a few posts about how everyone should buy local and support you local shop. I was feeling bad and decided my next board purchase will be local. Well, local for me is an hour drive to the next state. Anyway, that board broke 4 weeks ago! No big deal, this is the reason why I purchased my board local. I will make a trip, drop off the board and they will handle it and take care of me. 4 weeks have passed and I give them a call. They say CWB has not responded to them and as soon as they respond I will be taken care of. I call CWB and they have never received anything! Come to find out, no pictures seem to have been sent and I am still waiting! I am giving them another week to handle this and then I am making the hour drive back to pick up my board and handle it myself! What is the advantage again of buying local? Never again!! CWB, on the other hand, you still have a customer for life!

The benefits of buying local is that you keep a store that supports your local scene, in business. I highly doubt the online retailers are sponsoring demos/contests/rail jams etc.

Now you run into a different problem if the local shop sucks. Any good shop will look at a broken board that is clearly within warranty and walk over to their shelf and hand you a new one. This allows them to deal with the warranty and get the product replaced and at the same time keep the customer happy. It can get tricky this time of year, some mfgs are running out of certain shapes.

They looked at the board and pulled my date of purchase from the computer and said we will take care of it for you. No question this is a warranty issue. My reply "Can I just trade out and you keep the warranty board when it comes in?" They reply with your board is clearly a warranty issue, but we got burned in the past on a pair of bindings and you will have to wait til we receive a RMA (not sure cant remember exactly what type of number) from CWB and then you can walk out with a board. That was cool with me. My thought was can't take that long for CWB to respond. 4 weeks later and the process hasn't even been started!!

I want to buy Local as well...but their prices are usually not within $50 of what I can get from a reputable online vendor(including shipping). I would be on the phone every day asking if my new board is ready for pick up.

I'd like to buy local as well but when I can get a pair of 2010 Ronix Ones for $ 300.00 US instead of $ 550.00 CAN my local shop can suck it. They charge waaay too much for any piece of equipment they carry so I have a hard time justifying a purchase just to support them.

i'd call your shop and tell them if they don't get you hooked up within a few days you're filing a b.b.b. report. if you handled it yourself you'd already have a new board so they suck.

i buy everything just about on line because it only costs me 5.00 or less to ship it back under warranty. all i need is reciept which online vendor has on file call cwb get rma and ship with copy of reciept.put rma number on box it takes 5 business days to go from richmond va. to lynnwood washington.done deal.why pay 75 to 100 more plus 5% tax to local dealer. who doesn't support s$&^ i can get it online from dealer who does more to support wakeboarding nationwide.my theory nobody will take care of you like you will.