James Perry

Review of Buck Hill Ski & Snowboarding A...

Rental boards for kids are complete garbage. They ...

Rental boards for kids are complete garbage. They haven t been waxed or sharpened in what appears to be years. Yet, they continue to rent them out! I ran a local bike shop here in MN and we did snowboard and ski waxing/sharpening so while I wasn t the one doing it, my employees were, I still know what a decently waxed or recently waxed board looks like and these looked as if they hadn t been touched since new. Might as well of had storage wax on them.

Brought my son here for a lesson, rented him a board/bindings and bought a lift ticket and paid for 90 min lesson- all told over $100-

As I m watching the lesson I see the instructor pushing my son down the hill. Yet, all the other kids w their own boards are going 20 mph down the hill easily.

So, after the lesson the instructor tells me he did a great job, but that his board was unusually sticky and that it basically wouldn t slide down the hill on its own and that we should ask the rental shop to wax it he also made it clear that he was not able to teach my son much of anything because the board would literally not move, it was like it had brakes on! Looked funny to see him in the middle of a decently steep hill, wiggling around trying to get it to move and no dice. It wouldn t budge.

Ok! Great, now that his $100 lesson is over, we get told this, shouldn t the instructor have noticed this right away?!?! I think he did but it seemed to me that this was the condition of ALL the boards so it wouldn t have mattered one bit what board we had.

I am going to speak to someone about getting a refund for the lesson or a voucher for another lesson. At this point they switched out the board fo another one, however it looks just as bad if not worse, confirming my suspicion that they are ALL this bad.

I will update my post with how I am treated when I bring this to management and if I m treated well and they fix this issue, then, no harm; or at least less harm, no foul. Mistakes happen, I understand this as a business owner Now and having run many successful businesses that dealt in customer service. What is important however is how you deal with the mistakes and how you make them right.

So, we will see what they do to fix this, as my son is pretty disappointed with his lesson due to the board only, instructor was awesome.

I will update!

Update- we have now left, the second board we got did seem to work better, however, by then he was pretty tired and it was clear that because of the crappy 1st board he wasn t able to learn much of anything during his lesson. All the others in the lesson got to try stopping and carving however as my sons board didn t move period there was no way to teach him to stop.

My son just told me the instructor was very nice, and that he told my son over and over the board was not moving right and that he was sorry, that they would get him a better board after the lesson.

This is great; however, I think he should have had my son go exchange the board right away so he could at least have gotten half a lesson in

I wasn t able to speak with anyone about a voucher or refund for the lesson as the lesson area was busy and my son just wanted to leave, but I am hopefully going to contact them tomorrow morning and I will update with what they say.

All in all, it s a decent hill if you have your own board. The instructor my son had was a nice guy, however he should have handled the crappy board thing better as lessons aren t cheap and neither is our time.

I think I will probably look into a second lesson at Hyland for him.