Outcast Pontoon Boats & Customer Service

In todays world, we are constantly hearing bad things about company policies when it comes to warranties, guarantees and returned merchandise.  More than likely you can think of more than a couple of times that you feel you were treated unjustly or felt shafted by a company regarding a product.  I can personally think of at least a handful of unpleasant experiences without even producing smoke from my ears.  As a consumer who's got the short end of the stick more than a few times I think I now expect the worst when dealing with damaged products.  I go into situations with the gloves held high ready to come out swinging before I even get a response.  And a lot of times my pessimism is just.  In my last experience however, I was not only pleasantly surprised but almost a little embarrassed with the slightly annoyed tone in the e-mail I had sent.  As I had posted on my blog a few months back, I've been having trouble with some air bladders for my Fishcat 9IR pontoon boat.  My right pontoon had a leak in it.  The punctured bladder was returned to the fishin' hole tackle shop and when the new bladder came in it was picked up and installed.  During a trip to a local Edmonton area lake with Jokey and Tee, the bladder went flat just as I got out on the water due to a seam leak.  That bladder was also returned.  The next new bladder came and it was also installed.  I then took the boat out to Star Lake after work and sure enough it lost air as well.  I found the leak and decided to fix it myself using Aqua Seal as the leak although near the seam was not on the seam.  After fixing it I took the boat out to MIller's Lake and it seemed to be fine.  Then the bladder started loosing air, agian the leak was right on the seam and just FYI, the Aqua Seal worked fine.  At this point I decided instead of taking the bladder back to the fishin' hole again, I would send an e-mail.  I thought about sending the e-mail to Outcast but since the problem was with the bladder and not the boat, I chose to send the e-mail to Aire.  Aire is a pretty big company in it's own right with a ton of products and is owned by Outcast Sporting Gear.  In my e-mail I explained the problems I've been having and the inconvenience the bladders have caused.  Their reply was unexpected, at least by this pessimistic consumer.  They started off by apologizing for the trouble I've had with my aircells and then went on to write "We have a new airecell design with a lapweld on the seam which should eliminate the issues we’ve had in the past.  They are universal bladders so I will send to you four new bladders which would give you spares should any of the others not work properly.  Please forward me the mailing address and going forward please deal with us directly".  The aircells arrived yesterday, and I'm happy to say, no problems with leaking yet.  Of course we'll have to wait and see how the new bladder performs once it's on the water but what a breath of fresh air from the folks at Aire.  I'm very happy to say, I'll stay a loyal customer to Outcast for many years to come and want to say a big thank you to Chris.  I've already sent Chris an e-mail expressing those thoughts.  Customer service is still alive and well folks and there are still companies around that will back it's product.  Now if I can just figure out how to put the bladder in the the pontoon without any twists.  He makes it look so easy in this video.