G3 Zed Heel Turret Failure

[kalisto]

I've only had good experiences with G3 in every regard. Orders/warranties/returns.

[Jongle]

After the preliminary drama post (which is unusual/strange) the new product failure post is up on the webz with a whole series of great pictures, exactly 6:10 later somebody from G3 is on the job

It all seems kind of wierd cuz when does this ever happen in real life ?

I'm thinking some friend-of-G3 seen the post, gave them a heads up, they wisely jumped on it, did some good damage control

A real conspiracy theorist ( pretty much any american ) might say it was a setup

but in any case I don't think this is how G3 takes care of warranties on a day2day basis eh ?

It's not surprising that a company would super responsive to a catastrophic failure for a highly anticipated first-year product, especially when the failure has been reported on social media. For a more mundane warranty issue, yeah, I doubt you'd get a direct line to the G3 engineers on the same day.

[HukuTa_KydecHuk]

A real conspiracy theorist ( pretty much any american ) might say it was a setup

you overconspired here I think. Negative impact is a lot bigger. At the end of the day people don't want amazing CS, they just want to have a reliable product that will last as long as possible

[SupreChicken]

I waffled back and forth about getting zeds instead of vipecs for longer missions.

Gonna stick with vipecs for now til there is more beta available. Appreciate G3’s prompt response, though.

[LightRanger]

Interesting issue.

This reminds me of older Dynafit Verticals where, if you removed the brakes and ran them brakeless, the tab that supported your heel in the flat touring position could break off if you stomped too hard because it was no longer supported from below. Common failure mode and happened to one of mine (still have them on rock skis). But it didn't really make any difference one way or the other and they still skied and toured fine.

[1000-oaks]

Don't buy the stomp pad theory, for a stomp pad to work the boot heel has to be right on it (which would require some fine adjustment), or the pins have to have a lot of vertical play (or housing flex), which new Zeds would not have.

Big fan of G3 though, really like their stuff.

[XXX-er]

you overconspired here I think. Negative impact is a lot bigger. At the end of the day people don't want amazing CS, they just want to have a reliable product that will last as long as possible

well probably which is why I said probably some friend-of-G3 gave them the headsup and they acted quick, but look at all the people who have developed a mancrush on G3 as a result of reading about a pretty bad double breakage ?

Yeah I don't want to use the amazing customer service so I try to pass on stuff that doesn't look like a good idea, the zed did not excite me and so I'm still waiting to see if that guide who broke 6 RAD1's peels the top off his new ZEDS


overconspired eh? a good example of an overconspiracy would be Santa, some fat guy who slides down millions of chimneys, BUT on less evidence how many millions of americans don't think man walked on the moon OR that the world trade center fell because the CIA planted dynamite so america could go and kill brown people ...

[SumJongGuy]

well probably which is why I said probably some friend-of-G3 gave them the headsup and they acted quick, but look at all the people who have developed a mancrush on G3 as a result of reading about a pretty bad double breakage .

Or, perhaps they knew there might be a problem with these products out in the wild and have a marketing coordinator/social media manager doing searches a couple times a week with key words G3 and broken or failure.. maybe even ramped up that activity when OP contacted them so they were ready to respond to these threads proactively. Even if there isn't a pervasive problem, it is probably good practice to have a couple staff members doing google searches for their product names with common complaint words to keep ahead of this stuff.

[LHutz Esq]

I am thinking if my role in a company was “social media manager” or some such thing - i would have the google alerts set on high.

[XXX-er]

Don't buy the stomp pad theory, for a stomp pad to work the boot heel has to be right on it (which would require some fine adjustment), or the pins have to have a lot of vertical play (or housing flex), which new Zeds would not have.

Big fan of G3 though, really like their stuff.

https://www.wildsnow.com/25455/zed-g...-2/#more-25455

me neither, Lou has some good picts towards the bottom of this artical which give you a very clear idea of how the heelpiece goes together and so if i am reading what Lou sez correctly the boot NEVER touches the stomp pad not while skiiing or while touring ??

" In alpine mode, the pad is ~5 millimeters below your boot heel and presumably supports it when you do something forcefull that causes the binding heel to bend and deflect. During normal skiing, with most tech bindings you want your boot suspended between toe and heel, touching nowhere else. I’m finding it hard to imagine the binding deflecting enough to drop the boot heel 5 mm, but stranger things have happened in Canada. "

https://www.wildsnow.com/23680/g3-ze...view-look-new/

an earlier artical on how all the pieces go together, I must have glanced it and at the time was merely put off by the screws holding it all togetehr and didnt notice it was all plastic

[XXX-er]

was it over when the germans bombed pearl harbor ?

[retirwntm]

Germans?


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[swissiphic]

Or, perhaps they knew there might be a problem with these products out in the wild and have a marketing coordinator/social media manager doing searches a couple times a week with key words G3 and broken or failure.. maybe even ramped up that activity when OP contacted them so they were ready to respond to these threads proactively. Even if there isn't a pervasive problem, it is probably good practice to have a couple staff members doing google searches for their product names with common complaint words to keep ahead of this stuff.

No need 4 humans....A.I. and Algos and those bot things?

[swissiphic]

...the zed did not excite me...

From a general heelpiece design concept perspective, I am pretty intrigued by the ZED's heel. Toepiece? ho hum. Time will tell, but the larger diameter turret, kinda wide-ish stance mount plate and zero gap heelpiece/boot interface provide, hypothetically, a heel with a better lateral power transmission compared to other pure tech heels on the market.

Also, I have a mod idea involving a direct underside of boot shell heel area plastic/stomp plate contact power transmission enhancement....that in mind's eye, would work really well with the ZED.

Hope it's just a defective plastics composition issue and that it gets resolved quickly.

On the note of G3's warranty program; I've had issues with a few products over the past dozen or so years and they've always been great to deal with. Good tech chats on the phone with c.s., a few chats with engineers and I've always been satisfied with the end results.

[Meadow Skipper]

[SumJongGuy]

No need 4 humans....A.I. and Algos and those bot things?

Still need a human to sort out real customer issues from trolls and other crap. I spent the past decade working for one of the largest global networking equipment, services, and software companies on the planet.... in the business intelligence, strategy, and planning organization, services and software products. Most of the real world deployed AI right now is being used in call center routing stuff. A small to mid sized ski gear player like G3 might have their web providers pulling the analytics and search algo data but not on the level we're talking about here.

[swissiphic]

Still need a human to sort out real customer issues from trolls and other crap. I spent the past decade working for one of the largest global networking equipment, services, and software companies on the planet.... in the business intelligence, strategy, and planning organization, services and software products. Most of the real world deployed AI right now is being used in call center routing stuff. A small to mid sized ski gear player like G3 might have their web providers pulling the analytics and search algo data but not on the level we're talking about here.

Roger that. I've been schooled.

[SumJongGuy]

Roger that. I've been schooled.

The google alerts are pretty useful easy though..

[doebedoe]

Still need a human to sort out real customer issues from trolls and other crap. I spent the past decade working for one of the largest global networking equipment, services, and software companies on the planet.... in the business intelligence, strategy, and planning organization, services and software products. Most of the real world deployed AI right now is being used in call center routing stuff. A small to mid sized ski gear player like G3 might have their web providers pulling the analytics and search algo data but not on the level we're talking about here.

While I respect your experience -- as someone who works for an organization with relatively small IT resources, the analytics and search algos being discussed here are the sorts of things we have implemented. Basic AI functionality is packaged into all kinds of tools these days -- it's very easy to add such alerts to our social media team of one, and to provide light-AI chat bots to help customers. We rolled out such AI-chat bot services with one of our online hotlines and reduced needed human time by over 30% with similar efficacy rates. And I work for state government in human services -- not exactly high end tech shit. No reason G3 couldn't buy and configure similar software -- it's not that expensive on a small scale these days.

My better half is also a comp sci grad student working in AI/ML . She has helped implement AI in 3 companies over the past 3 years to make ends meet as a grad student. The idea that AI is so confined just doesn't jive with my experience. Unless you're using a very particular definition.

[XXX-er]

Germans? s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8lT1o0sDwI

yeah you fucking mo-ron dentists

[mrkbrnblm]

Hafjell, I was skinning up the Sherbie right as you were walking down and we spoke for a few minutes about your bindings. We found the water bar you hit, and definitely agree they should have survived the ride. Glad to hear G3 responded as they did!

[skiitsbetter]

Based on eyeball engineering, wouldn't relying on bottoming out on the stomp pad during large compressions dramatically raise the lateral release value? Didn't Dynafit ship their Verticals with brakes with a softer lateral spring because the boot on brake interface provided some additional friction? Are the brakes fully bottomed out when the But the engineers at G3 have learned through the various iterations of Onyx, Ion, and now Zed, so they know more than me.

The brakeless version of the Plum Yak has a similar "button". I remember this popping up in the Plum Guide thread as an aftermarket upgrade feature, but I'm too lazy to scroll the pages. Was there a reason why it was needed?

[hafjell]

G3 now hemming and hawing about delivery. Super sketchy.


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[SkiLyft]

G3 now hemming and hawing about delivery. Super sketchy.


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Rut rowwww; if G3 balks on this feel like numerous mags would veto them.
#RMUSkis


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[cmcrawfo]

Rut rowwww; if G3 balks on this feel like numerous mags would veto them.
#RMUSkis


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It would be interesting to track corporate success against TGR support. Year over year.