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I have been having a terrible time lately with Werner paddles. Some of it may just be bad luck, but all around I am loosing hope. I have had a Werner shogun (read expensive) paddle for over a year and absolutely loved it with no problems at all. This fall, it all of a sudden got water trapped inside the shaft. There were no obvious cracks, dings, or breaks which looked to be the problem. So, I called up Werner and they said to send it to them and they would fix it under warantee, great! Well, it cost $40 to ship it to them (ok), but with shipping both ways and repair I would be without a paddle for 3 weeks. I could live with that. 3 weeks later I get the Werner back and I instinctively shake it to prove to myself that the water is gone, and to my suprise it sounds like some cardboard or rocks rattling around in the shaft! So I contact Werner again. They want me to send it back for an inspection and re-repair. At least this time they will pay for shipping via a pre-paid label, but I have to wait one more week to get the label in the mail. I then ship it back to them and three weeks later it arrives home again, and to my astonishment, it still rattles! It was as if nothing had been done at all. I then contact Werner immediately and they don't know what could be wrong, but finally offer to replace my paddle with a new one. The new one will take 1.5 weeks to make and 1 week to ship. At least they didn't require me to ship back the defective one first this (third) time. And, they did send a second label to ship it back again for free. SO, I was without my paddle for a total of ~10 weeks! Now, here's where my luck gets bad.... I now had a brand new shogun that Werner sent me, on my very first real trip with it, it breaks!!! It caught in a small rock in the runout from baby sunshine on the narrows. I didn't even realize it broke until I pulled it out of the water. But, the shaft had a clean break just left of my left-hand position. Crap! now I am without paddle again! It was the weekend near the holidays, and I knew I wanted to get back on the river more within the next week, and I knew I would be without it again for at least 3 weeks to get it repaired, so I went to Sunrift and bought another new Werner shogun to have and use while the first got repaired. ON MY FIRST trip out with the second new paddle, it developed a 2 inch long raised crack in the back face of the paddle blade! Not from any scratch or impact. This is an obvious manufacturing defect! I can't believe this!! OK, so now I contact Werner about the first broken paddle, they need me to ship it to them, and it might not be covered under warantee (because I broke it) and if not, the cost of repair will be 60% of LIST price of a new paddle plus it cost $40 again to mail it to them, ouch! Then within another day, I call Sunrift about warantee on the second new paddle and they want me to bring it in for them to look at, but they will send it off to Werner for warantee repair and I can have a "loaner" non shogun paddle for the 3 weeks that it takes to repair the second one! Arrrrghhhh!!! I haven't taken it in to them yet.
I have been seriously trying to find an alternate brand of paddle with has the bouancy(sp) of the foam core and is a good strong creeking paddle, but there doesn't seem to be many alternatives out there. I've now got 2 NEW Werner paddles that are broken and defective, and all of that cost sunk into them. I'm not having a good day. |
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My current and on-going frustration with Werner (long) New 
BoaterTalk 
