UKC

I have been a devoted Patagonia customer for many years, and was rather sorry when my lightweight down jacket's zipper failed after 5 years. I tried mending it myself but without success, and therefore contacted Patagonia to see if they could help. They responded promptly and after sending them a photo of the problem they gave me the details of their repair operation in Portugal and a return form to complete.

I sent the jacket off 3 weeks ago and I have just received my jacket back from Portugal. I am absolutely delighted at what a wonderful job they have done. This is really excellent service from Patagonia, who have demonstrated an amazing sense of responsibility for their product even after 5 years of use. Patagonia stress their sense of environmental concern in all their promotional material, and this response exemplifies the reality of their principles. The jacket could so easily have been scrapped by a less caring and less responsible organisation. Well done Patagonia. Keep up the good work.

In reply to navigator:

The one nit-pick about this is that sending a jacket all the way to Portugal to fix a zip does not seem to be very environmentally friendly. However, short of licencing a whole load of approved tailors/sewers around the world who could provide this service more locally I'm not sure how to improve on this while still maintaining quality control.

I used to work in outdoor retail and dealt with returns; Patagucci were far and away the best company to deal with in this regard. I've stuck with buying their kit since about 1987, and i'm still using some items which are over 20 years old.

In reply to navigator:

Was it free? That's pretty good if so.

In reply to Steve John B:

Yeah, I've had a good service from them too. Rab and ME have been good too. Worst has to have been Arcteryx, it was shocking! Surprising considering they're top end of the market.

In reply to Steve John B:

Absolutely free of charge apart from my postage cost, which was minimal as it was down. The quality of the repair is absolutely incredible. A much harder job than actually building the jacket in the first place.

In reply to navigator:

Just had an almost identical problem with my Mountain Hardware Gravitor jacket. Zip failed after four years. I sent me jacket off to their European headquarters in France (which i had to pay for) and they got in touch this morning to say they will send me a new replacement jacket.

As someone who has never submitted an insurance/lifetime warranties I've been pleasantly surprised with their response..