Sport Chalet -Sports, Equipment, Clothes, you name it, they have it.
Written: Feb 10 '03
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I went to Sport Chalet looking for a pair of Yoga pants. Since I moved from a cosmopolitan town to a resort town I have lost some of my favorite stores. I also looked in Sports Basement and have bought items from there. I will review that site at some other time.
I am a personal trainer and was not only looking for Yoga pants but also equipment I could use with clients. I have a resistance tube for myself which isn’t appropriate for the average person. I have seen them many places but I was looking for the best price. They had exactly what I was looking for and for a great price. They also had items I wasn’t looking for but couldn’t pass up.
About the site:
Sportchalet.com sells everything from exercise equipment to sporting goods. I found their list of products to be excellent but I didn’t find everything I was looking for necessarily. The first page is very busy but there are many features on it that I like a lot. One is a link to a page that says “Expert Advice” and I have found that to be very useful and would recommend your looking at that even if you aren’t buying.
You’ll find pictures and links to "hot picks," "help picking out gifts," and I really like their "concept shops," which are in essence specialty shops by brand names with a link to the women’s shop. It was here that I found Yoga pants I liked rather than in the general Yoga area. So you really need to look around if you don’t see what you are looking for at first.
The pages load quickly most of the time. I did get stuck for a moment or two at various pages.
Since they don’t cross reference navigating can be a bit confusing. (How would I know to find Yoga pants here rather than under Yoga unless I spent time I might not have navigating the site?) The marketing ploy worked, though because I did end up buying a pair of sneakers I had no intention of buying because I was perusing the site.
You can shop by Top Shop or shop by Categories- with over 40 links. Again under footwear I did not find the sneakers I bought. I found them in the Woman’s shop, which includes a plus size link. They were under Gym Rat, although I also saw a pair in the Yoga shop I liked. So you will spend considerable time at this site. You will want to come here and look around unless you know exactly what you want and can avoid looking at all the other goodies.
This was my first time ordering from the site. I ended up with a pair of cropped pants for Yoga for $24.99 which is a good price. I have seen them in gyms and they are expensive. The tubing I found by first going to exercise on the first page and then to resistance training where I found an excellent selection of 14 items and found exactly what I was looking for, again at a good price.
There are size selection guides, owner’s guides as well as buyer’s guide. There is so much information on this site. You search by brands and price. You may get lost here, which I always find to be a problem. You may even want to note what page you saw an item you might like so you can easily go back to it. When I saw the sneakers, I didn’t put them in my shopping cart and it took me a few tries to find them again. In fact they are in a subcategory’s subcategory! They are a pair of New Balance cross trainers. I own about 6 pair of sneakers including New Balance. I am a perfect size 7 so I don’t hesitate to buy shoes online.
You will also find in some sneakers, items that are in 1/2 sizes.
Checkout:
I really like this feature “Promotions
Activated." This tells us the promotions on items in my order by highlighting them.
When you add items to your cart you will find an option for gift wrapping which is always nice as well as an estimated shipping and handling charge so there are no surprises. However, how shipping charges are calculated seemed to be a mystery until I saw shipping charges on the bottom of the page. Going there and then clicking on another link brought me finally to shipping charges where we are told “Shipping costs for orders placed on this site are based on the weight of the total order. An order containing multiple items typically receives a volume-shipping discount and therefore your total shipping and handling cost may be lower than the sum of individual ship charges appearing in your cart. You will be provided with the total shipping cost for your order during Checkout.” That is fine with me as long as a site provides me with an approximate cost before I have to give them a credit card, which this site does.
There are no gift cards unless you choose the gift wrapping option. Gift wrapping costs $4.95.
Credit cards accepted are American Express, Discover, Visa and Master Card.
Shipping and returns:
I was told that my items would be shipped in 5-8 days and they would leave the warehouse in 1-2-business days. I was fine with that and like the fact that I knew when it would leave the warehouse. I looked at my bill and saw that I ordered my items on a Thursday meaning they would leave the warehouse Friday or Monday and I would get my items by Monday or Tuesday which would be right on time. I received my items Thursday, which may have been a day or two more than expected but not unreasonable considering some other sites.
There is a nice clear link for their return policy and clicking that on will give you a pop-up window. Their policy is clear “You can expect a refund in the same form of payment originally used for purchase within 30 days of our receiving your returned product. You will be refunded the shipping cost if the return is a result of a manufacturer error or a shipping error on our part.
"Our Standard Return policies do not apply to all items." I did not read the exceptions since I couldn’t find them! I imagine it is related to electronic equipment sold at the site (heart rate monitors, for example).
My items:
I really do like my items. They were shipped nicely and came in perfect condition. I was a bit concerned about the pants because in the pants area I am not an exact size but I used their size guide and the pants are great. I could enlarge each picture so I got a good close look at what I was buying and my items were exact. The tubes are wonderful. I only bought one set and may end up with more at different levels of resistance.
My final thoughts:
This is not a perfect site but you couldn’t ask for the variety or number of items on this site. I don’t think I’ve seen so many products online!
One problem with that is navigating through the site but as I said making a note or even better bookmarking the page will solve the problem of not being able to find the product you want. In addition some areas are difficult to find.
My items didn’t come right on time, but it was close enough and they came exactly to specifications.
In spite of the flaws, it met my needs and I will use this site again.
If you have any questions, feel free to leave me a comment.
Thanks to Jetbluefan1, Anthony, for hosting this All-Star write-off. Be sure to check out other All-Star entries by these excellent writers:
ElaineHN, Fuche_Bu, GaelKM, Glomarrone, HawgWyld, Khahn86351, Lorace, Remnjava, Skbreese, Vormancian, Frostiepekkle, and your host Jetbluefan1.
Recommended:
Yes
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