Edge Sports Ski Shop — Local services in Lead

We had a negative customer service experience!! I gave them three stars instead of one because the store had nice products and a decent selection. However, we were treated rather poorly when we visited. I have been skiing for years but have never purchased my own skis and was very excited to look around. We personally have a lot of great online deals because Michael did search and rescue work. Our customer experience started off positive. I was very nice/honest with them and said that I wasn't planning on buying anything but asked if I could pay money for their boot fitting service (I never mentioned wanted to purchase online because of our discounts). The man immediately became passive aggressive after that and basically refused to help us saying it was a "free" service but only if we bought something. He could have just politely told me that they don't offer what I requested but instead he went on to tell me that they don't want to give their services to people who plan to shop online. Don't get me wrong, I understand where he is coming from...but he didn't have to be weird about it. It felt like he was trying to gilt trip me/make me feel bad for not buying from them because they were running a 20% off boots sale at the time. Michael and I are the type of people where if we receive amazing customer service, we usually end up buying things we told ourselves we wouldn't or more than we planned on buying. In this situation we ended up just leaving the store because I felt disrespected and talked down to. Michael said he almost pulled him aside to tell him not to talk to me like that because I was just trying to be respectful and upfront about what we were looking for. I could have just pretended to get the free service. The whole thing didn't make much sense because you can pay to rent their skis, but then he wouldn't let me pay him for a boot fitting... Which is fine that they don't offer that service, but you could just tell me politely that you don't offer the service I'm looking for. We will not be going back.

Updated post to 1 star because you can see how rude the owner was to me based off his comment below...it really just proves my point that I was talked down to and guilt tripped as a customer. I did talk to him about skis for a bit but he did not carry either of the two brands I was interested in. On top of that I was not on my phone at all in his store and Michael wasn't either so this guy is just unhinged. I hope more innocent customers don't get caught in this man's cross fire if they politely ask to pay him for a service.

He changed his whole comment below and took out us being on our phones because like I mentioned it wasn't true. You would think after 21 years in the business he would enjoy talking to customers where "13 minutes" wouldn't be such a bother to him. This new comment also proves he's unhinged because he went back and watched the video/audio footage... Sir I left my review a few days later because I was on vacation. Also, I was still kind to you after you were a jerk because I'm not a bad person and I don't make a scene/storm off when people are mean to me. Customers are allowed to leave reviews for your business. In the future I hope you take them as an opportunity to improve instead of to attack people. And I actually went to another ski shop in a different state that offered me great customer service and a boot fitting! I did find the discount he added funny, even if I'm not an influencer, enjoy an additional 10% on me and hopefully better customer service!

If anyone bothers to read all this and is curious my original written review...

This review is in response to the experience Amanda pischel posted, that being said I will refrain from typing the whole experience. However I will add some takeaways I had.

Both she and I come from retail experience and understand that the end all be all to sales is CUSTOMER SERVICE. And as Amanda explained the salesman left more to be desired.

The way to create a sale is to create a bond and build trust with your customers and as someone with 21 or more years of experience I think you can understand that too. I nor Amanda recall being on our phones shopping during our time in store, however if we were, it’s very naive to think that your customers are only interested in the select brands in your shop. Is it that unlikely that a customer could be comparing products to others? A salesman of your caliber should be able to understand that conflict and have an in depth understanding of both their inventory, and competing products so that customers don’t have to research anymore. Furthermore you should understand that ski equipment is an investment and requires a lot of knowledge prior to purchase to ensure you get the right product.

I sincerely wish you had taken these things into consideration because prior to that lack luster experience we would have most definitely...

My husband and I drove ten hours to come to Deadwood for the first time. We arrived at one in the morning in the middle of a snow storm. We tried five times to get up a huge hill to our rental but my car couldn’t make it up. We drove around and looked several places to park, but others had signs saying no parking. We then pulled up to Edge Sports. We looked for “No Parking Overnight” signs or any other indication that we couldn’t leave our car there and there were none. We were nervous to park on the side of the road because of the snow plows. There were no lines visible because of all the snow (we found out later there are NO lines painted in the parking lot). We parked right in front. The first ride we could get back down was at noon to get my car and it had already been towed. Management called a tow company and made no effort to have us contacted that we couldn’t park there. We talked with management at Edge Sports and apologized several times explaining our situation. They were very very rude saying we took up two parking spots. We paid $200 to get our car back that sat in a parking lot for less than 12 hours. Not a nice welcome to Deadwood. We will not be shopping here...