Best Tent Company, when all goes wrong...

I am wondering which company takes care of its buyers the best. I have had great luck with TNF, but I was wondering if anyone else has had good experience with other companies. MSR, Mountain Hardware, Bibler??? Or maybe poor service... Perhaps there is a lesser known manufacturer that has a great warranty or something. Thanks for the input in advance.

Little Otter

I had a good experience with Black Diamond (for a Bibler tent) on getting replacement pole sections when some bent in a storm.

I have two Hillebergs but they're so good I've not had to avail myself of their customer service :-) However, I hear it's good as well - Petra Hilleberg responded directly to my inquiries when buying the tents, and another of their staff answered the phone on the first ring and provided helpful answers; they also will allow you to set up a tent in your house or yard and send it back if the model doesn't suit you.

Never dealt with them on tents, but MSR has been great about service and fixes on other items (stoves and snowshoes in my case); I imagine it's an overall approach that applies to their tent line as well.

I've had real good service from Sierra Designs. I have one of their Glacier tents that is over 30 years old and they still re shock-corded the poles a few years back. Did the same thing for the poles on my Lightyear. No charge!

Cascade Designs, aka MSR and Sierra Designs are both excellent.

But I have also had good experience with:

TarpTent
Six Moon Designs
Mountain Laurel Designs.

Sierra Designs, I was hoping to maybe have the fly recoated on my old Half Moon, they sent a new fly, the tent was under ten years old. Henry at TarpTent takes time to answer questions when ordering, at least five-six years ago when I ordered my Squall.

In my short experience with camping equipment, I have become partial to Stephenson's-Warmlite. To my understanding, these are the types of tents used in say, an arctic expedition or rock climbing.

When I ordered my tent they were more than helpful in explaining the features of their tent and assisting in the ordering process. The tent can withstand 120 MPH winds, is double vented, double walled, and still comes in at around two and a half pounds. The poles are pre-bent annealed 7178-T6 aircraft aluminum. One of the strongest, lightest materials available. They offer several options you can have built into your tent. A choice of colors, a larger door, windows, internal stabilizers that increase wind resistance to 160 MPH, even an aluminized shell if you wish. Each tent is hand built to order. Only downside is all these things come at a price - to the tune of $500 for the cheapest.

Comparing the performance to what I have experienced in other tents, which is admittedly not a whole lot, I was more then impressed. They even included literature about how to properly seal the tent, how to deal with humidity and other tips and tricks.

I hate to be the first to offer a negative tidbit in this thread but, by far the worst customer service in the business has got to be Big Sky Products. Although thoroughly documented on this forum and others, I'd be happy to provide you an example of their utterly disappointing service in the form of a transcript of my own experience. I wish I could offer some measure of redemption with a positive comment about the quality of their highly touted Evolution series tent, but after 6 months I still had not received one.

When I became fed up with BSP, I called Henry Shires at TarpTent, as he had just released the Contrail model. Not only did he personally field my calls and e-mails with detailed answers/information, but even sent me his personal prototype Contrail tent as a loaner to try out on a three night trip. When I wasn't sure if the Contrail was right for me, he also sent a Rainbow to try out. I ended up going with the Contrail (have had it for 3 years) and, although its quality precludes the need for further customer service, I have the utmost confidence in Henry to go out of his way to make sure I'm satisfied with his product.

While its not a lite-weight company, if you want to know about customer service, Eureka! has replaced several broken tent parts free of charge years after I bought the tents. They once sent me a replacement pole at no charge with no questions asked. They did the same for replacing a rain fly for a huge four person tent. Regarding lite-weight, I have had great experiences with Henry Shire's Tarptents. I was shipped a tent body that had a bizarre stain (it only appeared in bright sunlight) on it that I was concerned may compromise the fabric in the future. He immediately sent me a new tent body and reduced the purchase price of the tent to compensate me for my troubles.