Sharpener Side Honed My Coated Steel

[bildeer]

Hello all, I recently had my mother take my skates to a shop that I had been patronizing for about seven years, and my skates have a black steel coating on them (graf) while I usually do not get them sharpened there, but as the place down the street from the store was closed, my mother took them to the shop in question where they proceeded to side hone the skates, thus removing the coating from the blades (you are not supposed to side hone black steel). When we called the owner of the shop and asked him why he side honed the skates, he said that it was because he felt that using the suggested method of using a piece of leather was insufficient. Naturally I am quite a bit upset that he would do that at the expense of my skate blades that now look as if they have been put through the garbage disposal. So my question to you all is whether my frustration is justified or if I am just off of my rocker.

[Md30]

I would be pissed.

[seagoal]

Your frustration is completely justified.   Sorry this happened to you.

Moving forward, don't trust your mom with your gear if at all possible and make sure you always specify to anyone working on your behalf or on your gear EXACTLY what you want and what is and is not okay. 

Assuming and trusting too much in these situations will lead to frustration, so just do your best to make sure you can handle it yourself in the future.

[Puckstopper]

^^ Exactly.   There is some shared culpability here as you made the decision to trust someone else with your skates but I'd say you'd be justified to ask for a discount on a pair of replacement blades. 

[seagoal]

7 minutes ago, Puckstopper said:

^^ Exactly.   There is some shared culpability here as you made the decision to trust someone else with your skates but I'd say you'd be justified to ask for a discount on a pair of replacement blades. 

^^ yup.

This was your bad and their bad, simultaneously.

[Lucky Pucker]

2 hours ago, seagoal said:

^^ yup.

This was your bad and their bad, simultaneously.

Respectfully, I disagree (to a degree). The “who” in a client-service provider transaction should not factor into the quality of the goods and/or service provided. Theoretically (read: ideally), anyone should be able to take those blades into a shop that advertises sharpening expertise. To my mind, their incorrect handling of a specialty item within their field shows embarrassing ignorance of progression in said field. I should think that when shown the evidence, they would be very much remiss to not save face through partial compensation to you. 

The only marginal culpability I could see on your part would be to think that everyone conducts themselves as they should. As much as I try to assume or hope the best of people, in would never send my Mom to a garage with my car!

To summarize, I think you are entitled to be very upset indeed. Your “bad” in this - if certain at all - is a lesser bad.

[seagoal]

18 minutes ago, Lucky Pucker said:

Respectfully, I disagree (to a degree). The “who” in a client-service provider transaction should not factor into the quality of the goods and/or service provided. Theoretically (read: ideally), anyone should be able to take those blades into a shop that advertises sharpening expertise. To my mind, their incorrect handling of a specialty item within their field shows embarrassing ignorance of progression in said field. I should think that when shown the evidence, they would be very much remiss to not save face through partial compensation to you. 

The only marginal culpability I could see on your part would be to think that everyone conducts themselves as they should. As much as I try to assume or hope the best of people, in would never send my Mom to a garage with my car!

To summarize, I think you are entitled to be very upset indeed. Your “bad” in this - if certain at all - is a lesser bad.

That's fair. 

We aren't in disagreement insofar as my point was just, next time, add this to the whole equation:  "Mom, make sure and tell them to only do the hollow and not touch the sides which is important because these blades are new and different."

It's just a good reminder to be proactive and deliberate.

[Lucky Pucker]

14 minutes ago, seagoal said:

That's fair. 

We aren't in disagreement insofar as my point was just, next time, add this to the whole equation:  "Mom, make sure and tell them to only do the hollow and not touch the sides which is important because these blades are new and different."

It's just a good reminder to be proactive and deliberate.

Yeah, mea culpa for poor phrasing; not really a disagreement with your point, as you noted.

FWIW, I just happened to be listening to  R.E.M. as I was replying to you! 

[ruckus007]

I'd be upset. When new products like these are introduced, all retailers are visited by the rep or they are given the opportunity to attend their meetings to learn about how to care for them. This shop either forgot or didn't bother to take in that information. To have them do this because "they felt like it's correct" is not a viable excuse. The proper method is to update the client and present them with the options, and proceed with their choice, even if at the clients' own peril.

I work in the car industry and if I did this to a client based on "how i feel", I'd be unemployed. Fast. 

They owe you a pair of steel. Hands down. 

[Chenner29]

When I worked retail, I never touched a customer's skates because I was never good at sharpening.  Having been the recipient of some bad sharpenings (mostly my own, I would try the high inside edge but it always felt like it ended up being high outside edge...lol), I would hate for any customer to have to step on the ice with one of my hack jobs, whether or not they paid for it.

I now work in outside sales.  I had an incident when I first started where I recommended the wrong product for a customer build out of their warehouse area.  They paid several of their guys OT to come in on the weekend to put this project together, so they lost time and money.  We ended up covering return freight back, agreed on the dollar amount for lost labor, and used that dollar amount to discount the correct items plus some other things they were looking for.  It was all made right in the end.

Most shops have pretty low margins on gear, but replacement steel shouldn't be too hard to replace, unless they can't source it from Graf or Step.  If this is the case, I'd ask for them to comp enough sharpenings to amount to the same cost as replacing said steel.

[Puckstopper]

5 hours ago, Chenner29 said:

If this is the case, I'd ask for them to comp enough sharpenings to amount to the same cost as replacing said steel.

This is probably the ultimate win-win solution as it doesn't cut directly into the shop's pocket but allows you to recoup your loss.

I certainly didn't intend to suggest that you and the shop were each equally culpable, they certainly deserve more of the blame for either not knowing their business or disregarding widely known info on how to handle DLC coated blades.  However, I will say you learned a valuable lesson fairly cheaply.   In college I loaned my goalie skates to a friend for the summer.  When I got back to school I found out he never took the soakers off after playing a couple games in June.    Needless to say the blades were totally coated in rust and I ended up telling him that he could keep them.  I was already somewhat picky about my gear at that point but that incident pushed me over the edge into the Ed Belfour level of crazy I currently am regarding gear maintenance.  The moral of the story is that it is YOUR gear, and if you let anyone else touch it the results are unpredictable at best. 

[jeff da goalie]

I'd ship your mom back for factory reconditioning.  It's clearly her fault.