Staley":253sd67m said:
I saw that they were still offering the tech inserts yesterday in the TGR thread. I just looked again today and it has been removed. Here's a screenshot that someone took 2 days ago:
Note the country: Sweden. I'm guessing that someone failed to remove the pads from the Swedish version of the website, which makes even more sense now that the link is gone today. Also note that the boots are pictured with touring pads mounted and that those touring pads
do not have tech inserts. There's no evidence at all that they could have been successfully purchased at the time. No one bought them via that link and had them delivered in hand. I discussed this very issue with the appropriate parties at Salomon in July and was advised at that time that the boots
would enter retail for 2010-11 and touring pads with tech inserts
would not be available.
Staley":253sd67m said:
It has yet to be conclusively demonstrated that said failure was the cause of this plaintiff's injury
Come on... I don't know what type of evidence a court would need to prove that the poorly-designed fitting caused the injury, but we're not in court here. We all know what caused his injury.
No, we don't. It's possible, for example, that he hit a rock and the sudden deceleration ripped the boot from the ski, which could happen with any binding/boot combination. Neither you nor I, nor anyone else at this time, has an analysis of the forces involved in this incident to determine if the same injury could have occurred with Dynafit's tech fittings. You and I both know that there are numerous other possibilities as well. The fact of the matter is that we
do not know with even the slightest degree of certainty what caused the injury.
Staley":253sd67m said:
They did not release the boot again the next year. The boots that failed were pre-production test models that were handed out to barely more than 100 industry pros and media, including yours truly, to try before they went into retail production. They released the first production models of the boot this year without the suspect tech fittings.
Not true: they sold these to normal consumers (such as Dalton). Even Salomon admitted this: "There are very limited quantities of these boots and pads in the market. While most of these products were distributed without charge for trial purposes, a very small number may have been sold." (from
http://www.wildsnow.com/2899/salomon-quest-boots-announcement/). I'm not sure why they say "may have been sold" since there's plenty of evidence to show that they were sold.
Let's see now...is it possible that someone who was given a demo pair, for example a shop, simply resold them? Others, for example, could have put their pair on eBay. That's the gist of Salomon's statement. Do you know where Dalton purchased his boots? Do you know for a fact how the seller of Dalton's boots acquired them? No, you don't, and neither do I. The irrefutable fact is that at the time of the incident Salomon had not input the boots into the retail chain. I discussed this at length as well with the appropriate parties at Salomon in the aforementioned July conversations.
Staley":253sd67m said:
Also, they' must have taken shortcuts of some sort while designing the fitting. Here's a quote from Lou, who I agree is the most trustworthy person in all of this: "I applied a reasonable amount of force to the pry bar and boot, nothing extreme. The fitting almost immediately deformed and pulled part way out of the boot, then the boot ejected from the binding due to the fitting going out of alignment. In other words, a skier could easily do this by simply leaning back in a pair of ski boots."
Which is why the touring pads were recalled prior to retail production. Clearly, if Lou was able to do this test -- and I trust him implicitly -- adequate product testing did not occur during the design phase of the inserts, I agree with you there. However, I return you to your original statement which I've tried throughout this thread to correct you on -- they didn't simply release the same boots to retail this year, it's not clear that the design resulted in Dalton's injury, and you have absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Salomon didn't attempt to make good on their design shortcoming. The fact of the matter is that Salomon's tech fitting design
has absolutely no impact whatsoever on the Quest boots put into retail this season, so this whole mess has no bearing at all on Tony's consideration of this season's Quest boot except that he can't use them with Dynafit bindings, which he's apparently not thinking of doing anyway.
And FYI it's seriously uncool to hotlink someone else's images as you did with Lou's. That's why Lou has implemented hotlink protection and the images failed to appear here. Doing so uses Lou's bandwidth to pay to display the images here. I have implemented similar hotlink protection at FTO for the same reason.
Staley":253sd67m said:
Another MAJOR issue: Salomon knew there was something wrong with the tech fittings BEFORE Dalton's accident occurred.
That's one person's Monday morning quarterbacking. Neither you nor I know if this individual has any reason, beef or grudge to fabricate or exaggerate his story. You may also note that his indication is that there were "problems" with the tech inserts that remain unspecified, and that this "problem" only occurred for him in touring mode, not skiing mode. He also accurately points out that, counter to your assertions above, the tech inserts involved were a pre-production demo unit and not on a retail boot.
The bottom line here is that you're jumping into the TGR lynch mob without knowing the facts first.
