Summit Sport — Local services in Whistler Resort Municipality

I wish it were possible to give a 0 or even a -1 star. Quite literally the easiest one star review I'll ever give though. Short story, spent over an hour here just to hire two pairs of boots with boards plus one set of skis and boots.

Long story: We arrive into the place and there's no signs of what to do (also relatively quiet). Eventually notice some computers down the back and type in our details. Proceed to wait a bit and then go to front counter as we had no idea where to go. A girl decides to help us at this point. She asks what size boots the two snowboarders in our group require and tells me she will get my ski stuff done later, walks off. Comes back after a while and says one pair of boots is out of stock and she must go somewhere else to get them? Goes away for another 10 mins.

By now it's been something like 25 mins. She comes back with boots and something is finally happening. She gets one board and struggles to give any pricing. She gets another board and says now she will put bindings on. Fast forward another 10-15 minutes, not even one set of bindings on. I decide I'll just go somewhere else and suddenly the staff are keen to speed up the process. A guy comes over to help actually give me boots (by that point it had been around 35-40 mins and I hadn't even looked at a pair of boots). He gets the boots and a new girl comes to get my skis. During this time the original sales girl had managed to attach one pair of bindings.

Now it's been around 50 minutes and I have boots, skis and poles yet the boarders are still waiting. Shortly after we go to pay while the girl finishes the bindings. Upon going to sign documents we realize no one was asked about helmets, no one was asked about cover, two of us were marked as the incorrect amount of days and one of us had the wrong equipment type.

At the end of it we entered the shop at 9:20 (maybe 9:22) and left at 10:30, I have text messages to a friend during this time where I discussed each stage as he was waiting in line to get the gondola up and telling us to just cut our losses and hire somewhere else... Should've...

I've never written a bad review online until now for concern over others safety. Our group reserved 5 bikes to ride 3 days each but had to cancel midway through our trip and rent elsewhere when realizing the bikes here were NOT SAFE. Day one we had a rear axle bolt back out causing a wheel wobble, loose seat post twist while riding and handlebars twist because a single crown mount was cobbed onto a downhill bike. Day two we asked to have the bikes checked over thoroughly. Upon arrival when asking if the bikes were checked over and torqued, the girl helping us picked up the bike and bounced it on the ground and said "it's good." I asked her to have the bolts all torqued in front of us. On another bike, we felt the tires and they were clearly half inflated so we asked about more pressure -- we were reassured that all bikes are sent out at 25 psi -- we asked her to put a gauge on them and it read 14 psi. Got to top of the mountain and wife said brakes on her bike were lacking -- they were down to the metal. Back to shop to get brakes replaced and when we said we wanted new brakes, the mechanic had to go to another shop to buy pads with his own money because they had zero sets of new pads in the shop. Sadly we didn't cancel until our last rental day and when I requested the refund there were three girls behind the register eating popsicles and one asked if I was cancelling because I "couldn't hack the heat." When I said no it was due to all the issues we were having she looked at me and said "well that's unfortunate!" with a smirk...place clearly needs better management...

Went to Evo Village Sports as a walk-in and the bikes were top notch, with excellent service and they actually cared. Wish we had rented from them...

If this is your first time in Whistler, you may have to wander around just a little bit to find Summit Sport. They are located in a basement which means you will have to carry your rental bike/equipment up and down two flights of stairs. Ended up booking ahead online and paying roughly $275 all in for gear, the bike and a lift pass for a day. If you want a good experience with Summit Sport, talk with Ross. He is knowledgeable, friendly and you can tell he cares about how well he does his job. I can’t say the same for his fellow employees. This is why I am rating only 3 stars. Other employees (specifically the ones upstairs) are rude and not helpful what so ever. After completing our first run we decided to bring the bikes back to the shop to have the seats raised a little bit. The man upstairs questioned our choice by saying “most people ride low so you don’t need an adjustment” we brought our bikes downstairs anyways where we were helped by a different employee who understood that everyone has a different preference for seat height. This downstairs employee also let us know that there are “tool kit” locations at the top of the mountain as well as in the village. If the upstairs man would have told us that we could have avoided bringing our bikes up and down and rather had more time on the runs. In general, we would rent from this company again. The bikes were brand new to this year and we felt safe in the equipment. My only complaint is the rude workers upstairs. Ignore them and go downstairs to get real service....