The Startingate Ski Shop — Local services in Jamaica

Many specialty shops--mountain biking, fishing, paddling, skiing--are at best a bit surly or at worst incompetent/uninterested in your performance in the sport. This place is the opposite: supportive, experienced professionals who want to help you enjoy skiing as much as you can, no matter what level you're at. You'll see lots of signed thank-you's on the walls from Olympians and pro racers, but it's also the perfect place to get your first pair of boots.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that these guys are the reason I can ski and I can't thank them enough. I have a relatively hard foot to fit, and struggled for years to find a boot that wouldn't shut down my foot. Three other boot fitters, tons of time stretching, grinding, and supporting--nothing worked. I genuinely thought I'd never be able to ski comfortably and would just have to give up on progressing or enjoying the sport.

Thankfully, Nick spent the time with me and got me in the right boot and the right orthotic. He was patient, kind, knowledgeable, and happy to answer all of my questions/show me how it was done/help me make decisions about my equipment. Chance gave me a great tune, helped my fianceé get her boot fit perfect, and was also very kind and helpful. I've brought two friends here, will bring many more, and will continue to get all my ski/boot work done here for as long...

This place came highly recommended, after getting my skis worked on there, I would nickname it "GEARSWAP." My wife and I went in to get a white pair of touring bindings mounted. We dropped our stuff off with a technician named Nate. When we returned to the store, we were told the bindings we dropped off were broken and they could sell us a new pair for 50% off. The "broken" bindings, they were showing me were not mine, the wrong size and black and I had never seen them. When I explained to everyone in the store these were not the ones I dropped off, they were ready to argue and told me they were. I have a receipt from the Ebay transaction, (see below) and pictures of the bindings I brought in. Not sure how you can argue with that, or why a “family owned” humble shop would argue at all over such a simple matter. We went back to the store twice to plead our case, Nate was never around and the (family owned) mafia mentality in the store made us feel uncomfortable. Seemed like a nice store on the surface, the bate and switch left us with a very bad taste in our mouth. Bad Karma for Starting Gate, pushing blame on customers when they need to look at the thieves in...

My girlfriend recently purchased an Atomic Helmet and Visor combo for $300 from this store. During the very first use it happened to be snowing on the mountain and when walking to the lift, she had the helmet on with the visor up. Snow immediately got stuck to the inside of the lens by falling through the gap in the visor and helmet and froze. She could not see the entire way down, nor could wipe it out. It was an awful experience and the helmet did not work as advertised. Upon contacting this store to discuss a return, the staff was extremely rude and said "no, no, I've just decided that I'm not going to take this helmet back." They won't accept a return for a piece of malfunctioning equipment - this just isn't right. It's actually infuriating. The store should know it's products better. This helmet isn't suitable for snowing conditions, which is ridiculous for a ski helmet. They left it up to us to contact Atomic. We didn't even use the helmet for more than 20 minutes. Absurd. I'd give zero...