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Issue with Naish Kite leading edge, manufacturing defect ?

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Matteo V
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Re: Issue with Naish Kite leading edge, manufacturing defect ?

Postby Matteo V » Wed Nov 22, 2017 8:50 pm

iriejohn wrote:
Wed Nov 22, 2017 7:38 am
iriejohn" wrote:IMO Making a warranty claim for this damage would be thoroughly dishonest!!!'
The above is from my post, can't be any plainer than that.
I stand corrected and you have certainly clarified, beyond any doubt, your postion. My position is to not necessarily pass judgment on the OP's level of honesty. I simply will say which scenario is more likely. I will not pass judgement on someone with a simple picture, lest that picture includes the piece of glass under the kite.

So if the OP is of the firm belief that this is not their fault, then they should pursue a warranty claim. But the OP should be prepared to run up against a brick wall with Naish.

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Re: Issue with Naish Kite leading edge, manufacturing defect ?

Postby tautologies » Wed Nov 22, 2017 8:59 pm

Matteo V wrote:
Wed Nov 22, 2017 8:50 pm

I stand corrected and you have certainly clarified, beyond any doubt, your postion. My position is to not necessarily pass judgment on the OP's level of honesty. I simply will say which scenario is more likely. I will not pass judgement on someone with a simple picture, lest that picture includes the piece of glass under the kite.

So if the OP is of the firm belief that this is not their fault, then they should pursue a warranty claim. But the OP should be prepared to run up against a brick wall with Naish.
Its not the honesty..it more about OP first of all not knowing the information, then secondly OP doesn't provide the detail. For every one apart from you it looks like the LE popped from an outside force. This is not at all about the honesty of OP...but I think it is weird to post this as manufacturing errors when OP clearly doesn't have much information about what happened.

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Re: Issue with Naish Kite leading edge, manufacturing defect ?

Postby magnusod » Thu Nov 23, 2017 1:01 pm

tautologies wrote:
Wed Nov 22, 2017 8:59 pm
Matteo V wrote:
Wed Nov 22, 2017 8:50 pm

I stand corrected and you have certainly clarified, beyond any doubt, your postion. My position is to not necessarily pass judgment on the OP's level of honesty. I simply will say which scenario is more likely. I will not pass judgement on someone with a simple picture, lest that picture includes the piece of glass under the kite.

So if the OP is of the firm belief that this is not their fault, then they should pursue a warranty claim. But the OP should be prepared to run up against a brick wall with Naish.
Its not the honesty..it more about OP first of all not knowing the information, then secondly OP doesn't provide the detail. For every one apart from you it looks like the LE popped from an outside force. This is not at all about the honesty of OP...but I think it is weird to post this as manufacturing errors when OP clearly doesn't have much information about what happened.
Spot on Tautologies! I seriously doubt that Matteo will accept that anyway. With this in his user info "Brand Affiliation: NONE F--- the corporate world". Seems like he's on a mission...

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Re: Issue with Naish Kite leading edge, manufacturing defect ?

Postby tautologies » Thu Nov 23, 2017 7:49 pm

magnusod wrote:
Thu Nov 23, 2017 1:01 pm
With this in his user info "Brand Affiliation: NONE F--- the corporate world". Seems like he's on a mission...
I saw that...wonder how he imagines new kites being made?
Matteo maybe you care to comment? I'm not trying to take the piss, but I seriously want to understand.

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Re: Issue with Naish Kite leading edge, manufacturing defect ?

Postby Matteo V » Thu Nov 23, 2017 10:02 pm

tautologies wrote:
Thu Nov 23, 2017 7:49 pm
magnusod wrote:
Thu Nov 23, 2017 1:01 pm
With this in his user info "Brand Affiliation: NONE F--- the corporate world". Seems like he's on a mission...
I saw that...wonder how he imagines new kites being made?
Matteo maybe you care to comment? I'm not trying to take the piss, but I seriously want to understand.
Thanks for calling me out on this and I will oblige your curiosity in as simple of a post as I can. I am hoping to not be accused of TL;DR by iriejohn. Honestly, this story would be much longer and much more boring than the below, though I feel I am leaving out many details that I would gladly fill in if asked.

I started out with HQ kites on land. But I just did not really enjoy the feeling of that kite and I wrongly attributed it to it being a low cost brand.

So I decided to go to the most expensive brand of foil kites - Ozone. I thought this was the way to go as I was holding to the belief that quality and service goes with higher price. That is where my education in corporate kiteboarding began. The stopper ball on two Ozone bars both failed. Apparently the plastic they used was not "low temp capable" of holding together. There was no question on whether it was a warranty claim as the first ball failed in the first few sessions and the second one showed cracking before disintegrating completely. Though this was a part that I was capable of making myself, I did not want to have a home made part on a kite with less than 10 sessions on it. Needless to say, that warranty claim did not go well. Most of it had to do with the US distributor of Ozone at the time. But I still never saw a replacement part for 2 brand new kites I had purchased at retail. In the end, I wound up with home made stopper balls anyway. Ozone, even when I finally was fed up with the US distributor and was working with Ozone in Europe, failed to ever get me my parts.

The above experience taught me to not buy into the "most expensive gear is the best" mentality. So I quickly ditched Ozone for HQ, but they did not have inflatable kites at the time. This left me searching for another brand for my next tube kite purchase.

So I went with Best kiteboarding, thinking that they could not be as bad, and I did not want to pay for service I might not receive anyway. Unfortunately, I happened to wind up with the 2010-2012 Best bar Chicken Loop releases. These were of a design that I admired at first, but then came to realize were of a faulty manufacture AND design. The CL release put a piece of plastic in tension where any plastic material's dimensional instability resulted in inevitable failure - and very early failure for heavier weight kiters. That is one of the big engineering "no no's" of plastic as plastic is not dimensionally stable and is extremely susceptible to elongation when in tension in almost every plastic formula.

On top of that, there was also a skipped step in manufacture of the stainless steel stopper ball at the end of the CL line. Without chamfering, the sharp edge cuts the line and renders the CL release unable to reload. Given that this is on a "release to both front lines tensioned" safety system, the kite can wind up on either side of the window without the kiter being able to steer it one way or the other or predict which way it would initially go. Think raking the beach with your kite.

Funniest thing about it was that, on another forum, I went back and fourth with Brian Scall (Best customer service), about this. In the end, I figured out that Best was lying to all kiters about this particular issue and how common it was. Here is what I eventually found.

"Since I have happened across 2 (2 YEARS LATER IT WAS 6) defective ball stoppers in a row (AND ONLY ONE HAND PICKED PROPERLY CHAMFERED ONE) that Brian says have only an occurrence of .05%, I bought a lottery ticket."

Best was telling me that the defect was only .05% (hmmmm 1 in 2000????) and I happened to have the experience of 6 out of 7 being defective. So they lied to me, and all of Bests bar users.


Though my issue with Ozone was never life threatening, my issue with Best WAS, and it did endanger innocent bystanders with no recall on this issue. Of lesser note, it also endangered our beaches with dangerous gear that should have been recalled.

Also of note in my experience, is that I did deal with some great HQ Kites gear. But they kind of succumbed to the same corporate mentality that took so many riders from Ozone to HQ around the time I was having issues with Ozone customer service. This was a pretty big lesson in kiteboarding for the industry, though it seems that corporate kiteboarding has a short memory. And this lesson was not new. But it cost Ozone probably 10 foil kite purchased from me alone. Add to that the number that were swayed, by hearing my story, in favor of other brands instead.

But my experience with Best was much more damaging, not really to Best, but to the corporate kiteboarding machine. Given that a company with such a good start, would endanger lives and access to kiteboarding spots, I felt it necessary to call every company out without regard for brand loyalty. It is apparent, given my experience and the experience of most other kiteboarders, that the bottom line of corporate kiteboarding is the most important part of kiteboarding to those corporations, not the rider.

So that is the best I can do for a quick synopsis of my experience with customer service across a few of brands I have used. I have had other issues, but the above are the main "eye openers" that explain most accurately why my "Brand Affiliation: NONE F--- the corporate world" is as it is. This is also why I would like to stay on the kiters side instead of the corporate side of kiteboarding. Kite companies don't care, on average, about their customers. I would challenge anyone to prove me wrong with multiple examples.

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Re: Issue with Naish Kite leading edge, manufacturing defect ?

Postby foilonfoil » Fri Nov 24, 2017 5:54 pm

More hours went into writing this thread than the time it would have taken to repair the leading edge.

On a side note, my kiting locations seem to have a "go to" company or individual who does kite repairs. A shout out to Airtime who are just down the road from me. A few of my buddies and I have industrial sewing machines but for me, these days I just don't have the time.

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Re: Issue with Naish Kite leading edge, manufacturing defect ?

Postby NorthernKitesAus » Thu Dec 07, 2017 2:40 am

foilonfoil wrote:
Mon Nov 20, 2017 1:54 am
See you in Altona next month if you are around.
Nah mate. I am in Townsville. Last time I was in Altona was back in 2011. Sorry whom am I speaking with? Irish?


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