The Benefits of Customer Service

I know. I know. I don't post things nearly often enough. Every once in a while I do actually have to work.

So, I've been looking at kayaks and saving money for nearly a year now, and yesterday I finally "laid out the Benjamins" as Jeffrey would say. I bought two kayaks for fishing since I figure that with all of my kids, one wouldn't be enough, and sure as shooting, I'll find somewhere that I want to take someone fishing and they won't have a kayak to go in. I ended up with one red and one yellow Redfish 12, and we love them. The best part of the story, though, is the experience of actually shopping for the yaks.

In my research, I narrowed the list down to only kayaks right around 12 feet long for various reasons, but mostly because it provides the best balance between weight, maneuverability, and cost. Once I had the length, then I researched the different brands and models to get an idea of what I wanted to shop for. Almost everything has a good review from someone, but a few brands and models really seemed to stand out. Native Watercraft, Wilderness Systems, and Heritage were the front-runners on my list.

Armed with that information and with money in the bank, we set out on Saturday to do some shopping. There are not a lot of kayak dealers in the DFW area, so we went to the closest place to our house first. High Trails Canoe in Garland is pretty close to where we live, and their website indicates that they have a wide range of kayaks to choose from. When we got there, I told the salesman what I was looking for and the brands that I was interested in. Right off, he told me that I was crazy to even consider a Wilderness Systems kayak. He went into a rather lengthy explanation of how the company doesn't honor their warranties, the boats have tons of issues, and even implied that the reps for the company may mislead internet readers by inflating the number of positive posts on different message boards. Interesting. I still have not found anything that corroborates the statements he made, and I have no reason to think that Wilderness Systems is anything other than a great kayak manufacturer.

Anyway, after the surprising opening move of basically telling me that my research was crap, the salesman showed me some of their other models from the warehouse. Most of them were on racks and were just pointed to, as in, "There's one, and there's another one, and there's one way up top, too. See it?" He never offered to let me sit in one, and he never really offered anything informative about fishing from a kayak except that they could install stuff for me. Finally, he told me that they might be getting some Heritage Redfish yaks in the shop soon, and that I might want to look at one of those.

Of course, that yak was already on my list so I was interested. I asked how soon they would have them, and he indicated that it would be a week or two. No problem in my mind, that would still fit well inside my timeframes. Next question: I asked what we needed to do to arrange for me to demo one once they arrived. The salesman looked at me kind of funny, and I clarified that I would be purchasing two yaks and that there was no way that I would spend $1,500+ on yaks that I never paddled. He said that they could let me rent one once they got entered into their rental fleet…around the middle of May. Before I left, I was certain to explain that I was going to buy two kayaks within the next two weeks, I was going to demo them beforehand, and that if he couldn't figure out a way to accommodate that, then he was losing out on a pretty nice sale. Apparently, he didn't care because he let me walk out the door.

Later that same day, I was in Mariner Sails in Dallas. As soon as I walked in the door, two guys greeted me and my family. I told them what I was looking for and they directed me to a specific salesman. "This guy has fished out of every kayak we sell. Let him help you look," they said. Meanwhile, they offered my kids candy (thanks again for that sugar rush), and they let the kids play on one of their catamarans while I shopped. As we went into the warehouse, I was overwhelmed by the number of kayaks available for browsing, but the salesman went straight to several different ones and pulled them all down on the floor. Setting them side-by-side, we then talked at length about the pros and cons of each one. He invited me to sit in each and try them out, and we narrowed my list to two. The Heritage Redfish and the Native Manta Ray.

At this point, I'm really liking both, but I need to demo them before I put out the money. The salesman said it was no problem. Normally, he would do a demo on a Thursday evening, but since he was busy then, we talked to the boss about doing it sooner. Shortly after, we had a time arranged on Monday evening to put both of the yaks in the water and test them out. What a better experience.

Monday evening, we met at White Rock Lake and paddled for about ninety minutes talking about the differences in the boats and with me switching boats several times. Finally, I decided on the Redfish, and yesterday I bought two. See what a little customer service can do for you?

Now the fun part…rigging it all out and catching fish.