Northwest Fishing Reports

I've noticed people will ask what's the best rod or what's the best reel out there. I believe every brand has their high performance rods/reels, but I think the most important thing is the warranty. I thought I'd post this for a resource for everyone and tell us what's your experience getting warranty work on your rigs.

I'll start, I've been buying St.Croix rods for the past 13 years. In the past the warranty was excellent, break a tip and bring it back to the store, they'll give you a new one. Lately its a different story, Last year I brought an Avid with a broken tip to Outdoor emporium. They wanted 10 bucks for shipping and another 20 for service fees, took 4 weeks and got a new one. This year same story broken tip, they wanted 10 bucks for shipping and that's it, no service fee, still waiting for my rod. Warranty is still reasonable, the turnaround time is a little long.

Kzoo, I have never gone through a warranty situation. Just for clarification, you said you bring it to OE, and then $'s start flowing...Do you mean that OE is charging your a "middle man" fee? If the fee's are coming via St. Clair, then I don't understand why you have to go to OE?
I would think mail it from home... St. Clair should re-imburse your postage??
yeah right...

I believe the charges goes from OE to St Croix. I've done it myself and the shipping costs are more, plus you need to find packaging as well, tough to do when you have a one piece 7 ft rod. With OE, you just need to bring in your rod and fill some paper work, they handle everything else.

I've never heard of manufacturers pay for shipping on warranty work for any products. Going through a dealer seems to save you money and headaches.

I just sent in a Lamiglas G 1000 freshwater series rod last week. I cut them a check for $50 bucks for fast track warranty. I broke the rod and I didnt want to make up some story why the rod broke. I am the original purchaser of the rod and I didnt want to wait 10 business days for them to call back with replacement options with thier warranty service.

USPS delivery confirmation shows that the rod arrived at their address last Friday. They didnt cash my check yet either. I hope the fast track service is fast and not a month. I want to use that rod now for bass fishing. I will post an update when I get the new rod back.

Got my St.Croix back today. Took 3 weeks, costed 10 bucks shipping from OE and 10 bucks shipping back from St.croix.

Toni wrote:I bought a St. Croix from the sportsman show about 4 years ago. After about 2 months and hardly any use...just trout at Bradley Lake, it started fraying. Not the wraps but the rod itself was peeling.
I had to pay $30 total and they sent me back a different rod.
So I paid for a warranty on defective merchandise. I won't buy St. Croix again.

A lot of manufactures are doing this and it is great if you break it but what about paying for their bad items?

Sorry to hear that Toni, must have been a bad batch. Never had issues like that from St.Croix, and I've bought the triumph, premiers, river series, avids and legends.

I finally got my lamiglas rod back today. Fast track warranty service took exactly 24 days from the day I shipped it till it came back today. They didnt ask any questions and I didnt want to make up some story on why the rod broke. It was a G1215. The only difference is the color of the rod. The 2010 models were flat black and the 2011 model is cherry red?. Cant wait till I hit the water with this rod.

As far as the brand new Shimano Curado goes, its still being worked on. Its been a week and a half. I will repost on when I get that back.

Warranty issues on Kistler rods. I have fished Kistler's for 4 years or so. In that time, I have broke my fair share of rods(mainly on hook sets, but some for no apparent reason). Every time I tried to deal with warranty claims with Kistler, I was basically offered a discount on a new rod. Considering I could get that same price for a new rod at one of the Ebay stores, that just didn't set well with me. So after my last go around when I snapped my brand new LTA 7'6" Heavy action rod just popping a football head free from a rock pile, I have finally called it quits with this brand. Don't get me wrong, I love the rods, just hate the warranty b.s. I was going to get a couple of their newest line of rods called the Z-bones, but when it says right on the warranty page that these rods have been tested so well, that they do not need a warranty, well lets just say I wasn't about to drop $400 on one to find out. I have since started switching my rods to Dobyns. Although I haven't had to use a claim yet, I know a couple of people who have and haven't had a single issue. They are also a fantastic rod, and I don't mind spending the money on them when the back their product up like they do. Just my 2 cents.
D.J.

Well my Lami Cascade Pro Series rod broke the other day, I called Lamiglas and they told me to send my rod in with a check for $20,shipping and handling, and they said they will do either one of the two things.
1)Replace the rod
or
2)Send me my money back that I payed for the rod.

This is all without the receipt, and Lamiglas does know that.
So i think i got good service from Lamiglas's Warranty Service. Rod is going in the mail today.

lamiglas has good warrenty and they are worth the extra money. when i bought my cert pro x96jc 3 years ago it was damaged at joes. and i talked to Jason Hambly and he told me to send it in with the 20 dollars and a note saying he wanted them to send a new rod. i got it 10 days later and it was brand new. the only company i know of now is XRODZ that has a no fault policy

Toni wrote:I bought a St. Croix from the sportsman show about 4 years ago. After about 2 months and hardly any use...just trout at Bradley Lake, it started fraying. Not the wraps but the rod itself was peeling.
I had to pay $30 total and they sent me back a different rod.
So I paid for a warranty on defective merchandise. I won't buy St. Croix again.

A lot of manufactures are doing this and it is great if you break it but what about paying for their bad items?

Im confident they sell defects at the sportsmans show. Two lamiglass excells broke on me. One was tangled and broke seperating line dont ask me how im still clueless. The other on hookset. A buddy and I lookes through all the xrods last year
Why do all of these make this noise? We asked. We didint get a real answer but they were defects.

Excell rod I got used even and put through major abuse has help up fine.

Takr it as a grain of salt or whatever, but I wont buy another rod or reel feom the sportsmanshow

Bought a cheap Shakespeare setup for my 5yr old son- $20 + tax at Cabela's and within 2 days of fishing, the drag quit working, followed shortly after by the bail messing up. The company wanted about what I paid for the setup to ship it in, but I was not willing to spend close to what I had paid to get it fixed, when it broke being new.

After jumping through some hoops, and complaining to the AG- they finally sent me a new setup, and even some free PowerBait for my troubles. Nice.

New setup did the same thing though- and I am thinking the cheapo reels do not like water on the line? Decided just to get a better reel for the pole, and no problems since. Did not bother trying to get the second one replaced because they were so nice replacing the first.