You may have already chosen your fly rod and think that you just have to choose where to buy it as cheaply as possible?
Do you think that buying on the Internet rhymes with not being able to test your rod before buying ?
Are you planning to buy a " branded fly rod " because it has a " lifetime warranty "?
Do you think that French retailers are too expensive and prefer to buy the equipment you have chosen abroad?
This article is made for you and aims to give you the best elements of choice on the essential services attached to a purchase of rod (or other PALM equipment) beyond the chosen equipment.
The guarantee of withdrawal linked to mail order sales
In France, mail-order sales legislation (on the Internet in particular) requires all merchants to offer a withdrawal guarantee for 14 days after your purchase. It is therefore possible to be fully reimbursed for your order, without having to justify anything, if upon receipt it does not correspond or no longer corresponds to what you wanted at the time of the order. Few French sites highlight this guarantee, but at Meilleursmoucheurs.fr we believe that it is important to apply it in complete transparency: this allows you to examine your rod well, to take it in hand and even test it by casting without risk ! If you are not satisfied we will reimburse you, only the return costs (minimal in France) will be at your expense.
This guarantee is a great advantage of distance selling that you generally do not have in a physical store, where all purchases are final.
The legal guarantee of conformity
French legislation now imposes on all merchants a 2-year legal guarantee of conformity obligation. This means that any serious defect, making the rod unfit for use, will result in its free repair, exchange or refund during this period.
This warranty is provided directly by the retailer, which is easier for you.
Some retailers do not visibly mention this guarantee, which is nevertheless essential for you, fly fishers.
Purchase abroad?
These French legal guarantees of withdrawal and conformity are very interesting for you and you will generally not have them if you buy your rod from a foreign reseller and in particular in China. An additional reason to buy from a French merchant , whatever the origin of the equipment purchased (whether Chinese or USA!). Note that there is no longer a French industrial manufacturer of fly rods: apart from craftsmanship, all rods are imported and made for the most part with blanks of Asian origin (Japan, Korea and sometimes China). The rods offered by the best flyfishers are made exclusively with the best quality blanks (Japanese or Korean).
Of course, no reseller can afford to have to regularly reimburse poor quality equipment on a long-term basis and a serious French reseller, aware of his legal obligations, must therefore select from the plethora of offers on the world market, reliable equipment that will give you satisfaction for a long time. . This is your best guarantee because a broken fly rod is often a wasted trip! The best guarantee is the one you don't use.
Commercial guarantees
The commercial guarantee is an additional guarantee which is added to the legal guarantees. It is the manufacturer or the distributor who decides to offer it, free or paid.
The commercial guarantee is of interest only if its duration is greater than 2 years or if it includes specific clauses that the legal guarantee does not offer (for example loan of equipment during a repair), which is rarely the case.
In France, the extended warranty of 3 or 5 years offered in supermarkets is often a good complement to the legal warranty of 2 years, which it allows to extend for an additional cost paid at the time of purchase.
In the field of PALM, the commercial guarantee on the rods is rather generally offered by the manufacturer, which will require returning to him to have it played if necessary. It is not always very easy to implement if you have purchased directly from a foreign site and going through a French retailer, who is in regular contact with the manufacturer, can make things easier.
Specific implementation conditions (such as a fixed processing fee of a few tens of euros), limitations (to a single repair, for example) or sometimes very long deadlines can nevertheless greatly limit their interest. It is advisable to look at these points in detail, before choosing a rod for its associated commercial guarantee. The return to the manufacturer is generally at your expense and can be very expensive due to shipping costs, see taxes import into the country of the manufacturer.
These points checked, if a "good" guarantee of 10 years or even "lifetime" can nevertheless attract, it should not be forgotten that a rod ages and gradually loses its initial qualities. Moreover, new technologies appear regularly and in 10 years will you want to have a repair on a rod gone out of fashion and outdated in performance?
It may be more interesting to buy a less expensive rod of equivalent performance with its 2-year legal guarantee, or even buy a tip to deal with one of the most frequent breakages and reserve the price difference to change this rod at the end of its life. or treat yourself to a fishing trip?
Do not hesitate to read our General Conditions of Sale which will give you all the details and the references of the French regulatory texts.
