good experience with Altrec this year so far. I wrote a review for my purchase and got a 15% off coupon for anything I want to buy that expires in 2 months. They seem to be copying the MooseJaw business model and it works.

My Mountain Gear refund experience was great and super quick even after 3-4 months of purchase.

Backcountry has become a big mess and I no longer recommend them. They keep canceling my orders for stuff not in stock that appears to be in stock on their website. Also their prices are extremely high and in some instances higher than the retail. See the Arcteryx Axios 50 BAckpack which sells off the Arcteryx site for $199 and most online retailer sell from $179 to $199. However BAckcountry lists this same pack at $229!!!

Same is true for some of the foot wear they sell. Everything seems to be $10 to $30+ above retail.

Not cool!

Interesting and unfortunate about Backcountry, I got some love for them to start the year. A jacket I wanted was on sale one day, not the next - bad luck for me I decided to buy the jacket on the next day when it wasn't on sale. The annoying little "want to chat" box popped down and rather than just close it I decided to ask if I could get the sale price from the day before. I didn't think it would happen, but they went for it and gave me the 30% off expired sale price. Then they shipped it to me for free in two days. All-in-all a pretty great experience.

Moosejaw makes buying stuff kind of fun, but that matters very little to me when they took several weeks to ship me the wrong size jacket. That was my one experience there, I would only order from them again if they had a markedly better price than other sites.

REI is good because of their return policy and the ability to return things to the store instead of shipping them, but they throw tax on there which ups the cost, particularly on pricier items.

Whittaker Mountaineering seemed okay for the one item I've ordered there, it's on its way to be returned though so we'll see how that part of the process goes. They include a return label so that helps.

Anyone ever order from Alpen Glow Gear? They have the Baruntse for a pretty good deal and I'm considering ordering a pair.

http://www.cleansnipe.com/ is a great site for fines of cheep and steep and stores of that sort. It tracks all of them at one time to help save you some time.

I had a potentially bad experience turn out well due to superlative customer serivce at Whittaker Mountaineering. I ordered an ice axe and was sent the wrong one. I called up the store and had the correct axe on my door step the next day, I hadn't even returned the first one, they trusted I would leave it out for the Fed Ex guy sometime that week.

Sierra Trading Post. Always good service, and athough I have had a couple peices of bad gear, they refunded my purchase price, no questions asked.

Best:
Backcountry.com (excellent customer service)
REI
e-OMC (excellent customer service)

Worst: Any website, ever, that you think might possibly be based in China.

Anybody used Steep and Cheap?
http://www.steepandcheap.com/?cmp_id=EM ... mv_pc=r204