solotripper wrote on Jul 8^th, 2009 at 10:45pm:

On the other-side of the coin, I've been privy too a few phone conversations between QDave and customers where the abuse was in the other direction. It takes a certain personality type too be in the "people" business.  My hat's off too anyone who does it well ;)

Good point; they do a job I could never, ever succeed in. it really DOES take a special breed to not only run a business like this, but to sustain it as well.

I had just such an experience as you mention early this year. I was at <an unnamed outfitters> the first week of June, when the owner got a call. It was from an out of state individual that had won a canoe the prior summer, and was going to show up in a few days to pick it up and go out on a trip with it. It was clear that the winner had no clue that the canoe needed to be registered to be used in the BW, and seemed to be getting irritated that they would have to jump through numerous government hoops to TRY to get it registered on a weekend when they arrived. The outfitter kept an even temperament, and even did their best to help the winner (WHINER?) out by providing some resources to accomplish what he needed to do.

So here was a case of someone who dawdled away almost a whole year, waited until the very last minute, did not do the proper research, and yet seemed to want to blame the outfitter. Had I been in the outfitters position, it would have become clear quite quickly why I would never make it in that business.

As others have said, it would be interesting to hear the outfitters side of the story. A $1000 refund is nothing short of amazing.