I recently bought a pair of Cloudveil 8x's because of the great hooplah I was given regarding their product and customer service.
Well, I just had a pair of Cloudveil 8x's, wore approximately 12 times and the taped seam inside one of the heels came untaped. I contacted a my local Tackle shop for warranty and they in turn contacted Cloudveil for warranty. Cloudveil wanted to replace the waders rather than repair the waders, which I was fine with. The problem was Cloudveil was out of stock on XL waders in the 8x.
They said they would probably have a replacement pair of waders ready for replacement in 4-6 weeks, but they did not know for sure. Obviously, that was not a realistic time frame if I intended on fishing in waders anytime soon, so I asked the shop to just trade me out a set of waders in an XL. Well, they didn't have any XL's in stock either for replacement.
The store said that Cloudveils customer service and product warranty in the beginning was stellar since they were trying to give Simms a run for thier money. Once Cloudveil came into the picture and began creating strife for Simms, Simms stepped it up and has since increased the customer service which was seeming to become a bit lax for a while.
Cloudveil made a call to the store that I purchased the waders from and said that they could not make any guarantees as to a release date of a pair of XL's and also denied a request to do a product exchange from a different retailer. Upon hearing this news, I told our local shop that I wanted my money back or an exchange for a pair of Simms G3's. The store gladly did the exchange of waders and gave me a pair of G3's at the same price.
The store then admitted that they have had nothing but problems in dealing with warranties on Cloudveil products since they are made overseas. Originally Cloudveil made these great promises to the retailers but has since fallen on their faces allegedly.
Hopefully, no one else has to deal with this sort of crap.
The irony of all of this is that last weekend upon wearing my G3's for the 2nd time, I tore them in the boat. I took them to the store and they have to send them in for repair to Simms.
I'm sure glad fishing is relaxing!