When e-buying clubs, watch out for the shaft
THE OLYMPIAN
It's a scary story, a cautionary tale, and unfortunately it's not all that rare.
For the many of us who haven’t bought a club at a brick-and-mortar golf store or pro shop in years, it might just be the price of doing business in the online side streets of the golf equipment industry.
Eventually, in these times and this volatile marketplace, you’ll get bit.
The story came from Craig Foster, who is the wrong guy to try to fool when it comes to golf clubs. It began when a customer came in for a fitting for a set of new irons he’d just bought.
They were fresh out of the wrapper, TaylorMade R9 irons with Rifle Project X Flighted shafts, purchased on eBay for $550. They looked good. They looked real.
“The average person would not be able to tell the difference, but they were fake all the way,” e-mailed Foster, whose Craig’s Custom Clubs deals in golf club adjustments, repairs and customizing.
There was a serial number etched into the hosel of the 7-iron, which, for a start, looked legit enough to Foster. On closer inspection, he began finding small flaws, enough to raise his eyebrows.
First of all, whoever made the clubs used the cheapest “stepless” shafts, which cost about $2.60 each. Foster calls them “driving range shafts.”
“Real Project X Flighted shafts cost me about $35 each,” he wrote.
The bands on the shafts were printed up and stuck on the wrong side, which for this brand means on the top rather than the bottom.
The ends of the shafts were cut off, crudely, with what was probably a pipe cutter. End cuts are clean when shafts come from the real factory.
There was no etching on the shafts to identify what model shaft it was. And the grips were all loose – Foster could turn them, and underneath he found cheap tape.
Tiny irregularities. Could have fooled me. Fooled the customer.
“Visually, I don’t know who would tell the difference,” Foster said.
The customer played with the clubs once before bringing them to Foster.
“He thought they felt pretty good,” Foster said. “It’s difficult to tell just by hitting them.”
The least expensive clubs Foster can make for somebody, using those driving range shafts, don’t even feel too bad.
“It’s not a night and day thing that you’ll notice.”
Finally, Foster started measuring the “frequency” of the suspect shafts, which means vibrating the clubs to determine their flex characteristics. There should have been a logical progression in frequency through the shafts, shortest clubs to longest.
“The numbers just didn’t match up,” Foster said.
By now, Foster knew he had counterfeits on his hands.
He broke the news to his customer, a local guy and a good player. As you would expect, he was surprised and disappointed.
“He called the seller,” Foster said, “and the seller told him, ‘Oh geez, I didn’t know.’ ”
The seller first offered a partial refund, and the customer could keep the clubheads. The heads might have been the only legitimate TaylorMade component in the set, according to Foster, but they could as easily have been fake, too, copied in a foundry.
The customer was not interested in keeping any part of the set. Foster, who didn’t share the customer’s identity, doesn’t know whether he made use of any of eBay’s remedies, such as negative feedback for the seller.
“Once you’re dealing with somebody who’s lying to you,” Foster said, “you just want to be clear of them.”
The seller is, finally, giving the guy a full refund.
“If the seller didn’t actually know, he should have known,” Foster said. “Actually, sellers do know, and they just pretend they were fooled.”
These are not the first counterfeit clubs Foster has seen.
“Someone brought in a TaylorMade Burner three-wood, Fujikura shaft, TaylorMade head cover, the whole deal, and it looked perfect except the club swing-weighted at G5!” Foster wrote. “Only about 30 swing-weights too high. Also an eBay deal.”
No need to get into a discussion of swing-weights here – it’s enough to say the club, to Foster, was an obvious fake.
Every golf manufacturer’s Web site warns of counterfeit clubs.
There are successful prosecutions of counterfeiters, with severe consequences for the convicted.
And still it goes on.
(Note: Feel free to e-mail to the address below your own stories of deception, misrepresentation and bad dealings in the online golf equipment universe. I’ve got one; I’d like to hear yours.)
Part of the problem, in Foster’s mind, is the quantity of new golf clubs flooding the market. Last year’s $400 driver is this year’s $149 driver – there are, in fact, good and legitimate deals to be had.
But offers that look too good to be true might just be.
“I don’t think that part of it’s gonna change,” Foster said. “That’s just the way modern merchandising works.”
Foster has a standing offer to examine any club, for free, for anyone who has doubts.
“People need to buy locally,” he said. “Buy from people they trust.”
Labels: golf shafts
