The Northern California Fly Fishing Board

Lance is great!!! He really cares!

Good to hear. I wore the proguides for three years, before I grew out of them. Im not easy on waders either. black berries on the trinity didnt even phase them.
George

Keep it coming guys!!! I want the good and the bad!!! i need more!!

It was August 2000. I can see from the bulk of the responses here that I what I experienced isn't the norm. It is a shame I got such a poor impression of the company--goes to show just how important customer service really is.

Dawn

I dont think I have seen you in store before. I'll stop by to chat. I didnt mean to say that no one there knows about fishing. There is a guy that works there with a beard ... cant remember his name, but he is very cool guy. He doesnt tie his own flies though, and I was trying to talk to him about tying materials.

Someone, mentioned about not getting great service when not dressed nicely. I have a similar experience. I am relatively young compared to most other people in the financial district, and I have had employees pay more attention to the older guys who presumably have more money to spend. I get it, but Lelands at least makes me feel like an appreciated customer.

That said. I have had a pair of Orvis Silver Label Waders. Good price and no leaks after 3 years. I really like them. No complaints except for a broken zipper on the pocket of the inner pouch. I even recommended them to a friend. I also prefer Orvis's design for the magnetic net cord. I like how the cord coils and retracts when others don't.

Look forward to meeting you.
Matt

You at USF? Who's your teacher?

I have only been in one Orvis store. My friends and I would get together for a week vacation in Tahoe every year and we'd stop into the Tahoe City store (upstairs). We always wanted to find out where and what they were hitting on and made it a requirement to purchase something for a thank you. Generally I would try to buy some tying materials for flies (even found a few items I couldn't find near home) and my friends would always get some stuff too. Sometimes maybe just a shirt or two.

We always seemed to leave with a bad feeling from the service and untactful remarks we would get from the employees, every time. Granted, we have only been fly fishing for about ten years, but they talked to us and treated us like we didn't know what a trout was and what were we doing on the water anyway if we needed to ask questions! Needless to say, we quit going back there and a couple years ago I decided to drop by to see if they had an attitude adjustment. Hmmmmm......store was gone. No surprise though and I didn't miss them.

One of my friends said he had a similar experience at another Orvis store. Haven't been back to an Orvis store since. I felt I didn't need the aggravation for the prices they were selling for.

Beerfly

I would guess that the elites in "Hollywood", WY were not used to seeing Teton Tina in their hallowed halls.
Jackson Hole is a lot more like Aspen or Telluride these days that the wild west town of days past.

I have had good luck with customer service in the SF store, unfortunately the reason I know this is because I keep having to take back my Orvis hunting jacket which seems to fall apart after two or three trips in the field. You keep replacing it. It has fallen apart again, new in January, I think this is my last one...buying a columbia now.
I have also had the same experience as Dawn. Once in Bozeman Montana and once again recently at the new red bluff store, I will never enter the red bluff store again.

Anyway I generally am not fond of the Orvis "Attitude"...It seems to me that the Orvis fly fisherman is more into looking good than anything. Tweed wearing rich dudes who think they are hot $hit because they know some latin and have a $3000 outfit.
I am far more fond of the blue-collar fly fishing mentality.

grevel wrote:
I have been putting together spreadsheets full of numbers and ultimatly ranking Orvis "sucess" on the west coast.

George,
I think your case may be flawed, unless you are taking into account single customer's buying trends over the years. As many noted, sometimes we come in for a $5 zinger, others for a $400 rod. And what I spent 20 years ago is not at all equal to what I am willing to spend today. Of course, you could just make the assumption that your numbers include members of each demographic, so its a "slice" of reality. But just a warning, as this is where professors will ding you on case studies.

BTW - I too am the owner of a 20+ year old Western Orvis rod. It was not a kit, but it was a beginners package with a Madison reel, line, etc. I replaced the reel seat a few years back and gave the rod to my son. It is still one of my favorite rods. It is an unfinished graphite blank (the carbon wraps are right out there), and it is a parabolic rod, that can act like anything from a 4 to 6 weight depending how hard you push it.

Bruce,

When we worked on Maiden Lane, the perception of honesty from the staff and a customer service policy that allowed the staff the discretion to refund, exchange, or repair items (that were defective or misused and broken)is what kept the customers coming back. When the company began a less personal programmed sales plan along with the development of the elitist aire of affectation, perhaps in response to “the movie”, the image of the company went down in the minds of a lot of customers who fled to other shops, manufacturers, or catalog retailers (although sales went up).

My personal dissatisfaction with Orvis began the day after I sold an $18,000.00 shotgun and was informed that the commission structure was being cut in half, effective the day I sold the shotgun…more for the family in Manchester.

Like you, I still use a few of the rods and reels I obtained at employee prices…20+ years and they still perform.

Petri Heil,

Paul

Tom grossman