Hi All:
First, I hope that this post doesn’t violate any BOS guidelines, but I wanted to share my recent and wonderful experience with Performance Ski. (I guess I should also clarify that I have absolutely no financial affiliation with the company or personal relationship with any of its employees.)
As you may have gathered from my recent post, I’m effectively gearing up from scratch, and so recently spent considerable time scouring the interwebs for gear vendors. For several reasons, PerfSki was my top choice:
(1) They have an extensive selection (in terms of brands, models, sizes) for a huge range of equipment (in fact, PerfSki was the only vendor to offer everything that I wanted to purchase).
(2) They have competitive prices (in line or slightly lower than most other vendors), and offer free shipping and (for me in CA, at least) no sales tax.
(3) They are strong advocates of our sport (they are active sponsors of tournaments) and active members of our community (in fact, I believe that some PerfSki folks are BOS members, including @mike_mapple)
(4) They are a relatively small US company (the big and/or foreign corporations already get more than enough of my money)
Having decided on PerfSki, I’d placed (and left) several items in my PerfSki online cart for over a week as I did research to finalize decisions about my new gear. After a week in the fresh mountain air, I returned home with the conviction to pull the trigger. My only lingering hesitation was that some of my purchases were quite likely to go on sale (with Black Friday coming up, etc.).
So, I reached out to PerfSki, and corresponded with owner Bill Porter. Bill mentioned that they have a price guarantee, where they will offer store credit for any purchases that are subsequently discounted during their holiday promotions (in fact, Bill just posted a video about this here). However, Bill mentioned that he knew what the Black Friday discounts they were going to offer and (after I sent him a list of the items in my cart), he promptly wrote back with the ‘future’ sales prices for each item, which he would offer me right now! I made the purchase and saved ~$400 over their (an already competitive) listed prices!
It’s unusual in my experience when a seller can genuinely put themselves in your place (as Bill said “I know how I feel when an item goes on sale right after my purchase”). But exceptional customer service was evident in every aspect of my experience. Bill was genuinely helpful and thoughtful—thinking to ask if I would prefer that he set up the ski/bindings, or whether I would prefer to do it—and when I told him that I would prefer to do the set up myself, Bill followed up with detailed spec charts and some advice and tips (based on his first-hand experience) to help me set up my ski when it arrives.
We’ve all had unfortunate purchasing experiences, and those are the ones that I (at least) tend to remember (with a touch of bitterness) and am most likely to share with others. My recent experience with Bill at Performance Ski was so exceptionally positive that I really wanted to share this with the community. It was a genuine pleasure to do business with PerfSki and it makes me happy to support a wonderful, small American business.
Take care,
Brian