- Mar 18, 2009
- 14,644
- 72
- 22,580
I have bought a lot of crap gear over the years, so here is a thread for people to post their worst purchases. Any outdoor gear permissible. The thing that really p!sses me off is not a piece of gear that simply has a problem. Things can slip thought QC. It's gear that has design flaws would have been instantly discovered if any testing had been conducted during the design phase. It is gear that is a giant FU to the customer. The company obviously just does not care.
1) What brought this thread on is half a dozen tubes I bought online that I have been battling with. The brand appears to be "QTube." At least I think it's a "Q". Maybe it is a stylized "O". These things have valve threading so deep that none of my pumps can get a good seal. Half the air goes in the tube and half comes out via the threading.
2) North Face trail running shoes. Worst running shoe I have ever bought. I cannot remember the model name, but it was supposed to be their ultrarunning shoe suitable for 100 mile races. They had trick attachment points on the sides and back for gaitors. It also had a hardish rubber piece covering the toes that I though would be good protection against stubbing my toes against rocks and roots. The shoes fell apart, and it was not just one thing. It was everything. Every adhesive, coating, and coloring disintegrated with hardly any use. All of the leather was coated with a sort of paint to make the surface smooth and stylish. That stuff crumbled, making the shoes look like they were ten years old. The rubber toe piece was bonded to the "paint" on the leather, so it pulled away from the leather since the "paint" was not stuck to the leather very well. Plastic pieces on the sole came undone from the foam. The rubber sole had gaps exposing the foam part of the sole; the rubber peeled away at corners. And to make matters worse, the shoes used Goretex to make them "waterproof". What this means in practice is when they get wet, air does not circulate well enough to dry them out before mildew sets in. I am never ever ever buying anything from the North Face again. That company is on my black list. Fck them.
3) Performance Lunar Light tubes. 50% failure rate. And I thought I was getting a god deal by buying ten of them during one of Performance's sales.
4) Pearl Izumi windproof shoe covers. The bottoms were made from a stretchy fabric that had no protection against abrasion whatsoever. Walk on them a little and it would wear holes in the material. I ended up putting duct tape on the bottoms. They looked really cool in the pictures, though.
5) Original Oakley M frames. Cracked if you looked at them wrong, and I do not have a large head. I switched to Rudy and never looked back.
6) Voler chamois. It had a blue fabric section in the center, a white terry cloth front section that some fool decided should be white, gray side sections, and seams to hold the four pieces together that seemed to be strategically placed to rub your boys the wrong way. The lycra in the shorts had about 1/5th the longevity as that used by Assos.
1) What brought this thread on is half a dozen tubes I bought online that I have been battling with. The brand appears to be "QTube." At least I think it's a "Q". Maybe it is a stylized "O". These things have valve threading so deep that none of my pumps can get a good seal. Half the air goes in the tube and half comes out via the threading.
2) North Face trail running shoes. Worst running shoe I have ever bought. I cannot remember the model name, but it was supposed to be their ultrarunning shoe suitable for 100 mile races. They had trick attachment points on the sides and back for gaitors. It also had a hardish rubber piece covering the toes that I though would be good protection against stubbing my toes against rocks and roots. The shoes fell apart, and it was not just one thing. It was everything. Every adhesive, coating, and coloring disintegrated with hardly any use. All of the leather was coated with a sort of paint to make the surface smooth and stylish. That stuff crumbled, making the shoes look like they were ten years old. The rubber toe piece was bonded to the "paint" on the leather, so it pulled away from the leather since the "paint" was not stuck to the leather very well. Plastic pieces on the sole came undone from the foam. The rubber sole had gaps exposing the foam part of the sole; the rubber peeled away at corners. And to make matters worse, the shoes used Goretex to make them "waterproof". What this means in practice is when they get wet, air does not circulate well enough to dry them out before mildew sets in. I am never ever ever buying anything from the North Face again. That company is on my black list. Fck them.
3) Performance Lunar Light tubes. 50% failure rate. And I thought I was getting a god deal by buying ten of them during one of Performance's sales.
4) Pearl Izumi windproof shoe covers. The bottoms were made from a stretchy fabric that had no protection against abrasion whatsoever. Walk on them a little and it would wear holes in the material. I ended up putting duct tape on the bottoms. They looked really cool in the pictures, though.
5) Original Oakley M frames. Cracked if you looked at them wrong, and I do not have a large head. I switched to Rudy and never looked back.
6) Voler chamois. It had a blue fabric section in the center, a white terry cloth front section that some fool decided should be white, gray side sections, and seams to hold the four pieces together that seemed to be strategically placed to rub your boys the wrong way. The lycra in the shorts had about 1/5th the longevity as that used by Assos.
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