The following is a story about my experience with 9thward skis. You can feel free to draw your own conclusions but really there is only one way to look at this. I spent over 400 dollars and skiied on skis for under 6 days. Some people may say this is not the proper way to deal with this but the proper actions have already been taken and its time to SPREAD THE WORD. Enough threads like this and i can only hope that the NS community will be able to understand 9thward as the company it is.
I purchased last years HH pros online and began skiing them the day after christmas. I skiied a few days over christmas break, i skiied mostly rails and i will admit that i did some pretty good damage to the sidewalls but nothing that should cause a "quality" ski to break in half. The following weekend i went to whiteface for the first time of the season, i went off a small bump and landed in some thicker snow than i was prepared for causing me to roll over the front of my skis. It was a pretty low speed crash and nothing horrible happened at all. The core on one of the skis broke as well as the topsheet horizontally about 6 inches from the front of my boot. There was clearly some sort of flaw in the core and i was really bummed but knew that seeing that i only skied about 2 weeks on these skis they would surely be warranteed. I sent them into the online dealer who, after saying that i shouldnt use skis on rails, i was able to convince to show them to 9thward. He did this and forwarded the email he got from 9th to me. The email essentially said that seeing the sidewall damage that he wouldnt give me a new pair. I then emailed 9thward directly and this email was ignored.
In my opinion the sidewall damage has nothing to do with an entire core getting cracked in half. Clearly i could not have treated these skis so badly that they should break in half after 2 weeks, and less than 6 days of skiing.
Take this post as a word of warning and although i will continue to attempt to contact 9thward i believe that i have lost my money completely. As a side note my cousin broke a pair of his 9thwards this winter. I personally do not support 9thward in anyway at this point and i do not suggest buying their skis at ANY time in the future. I realise that 9thward is most likely a dying company and may be my fault to put any trust in this company but i figured for the price i would get an at least respectable ski, and i was wrong.
SPARKNOTES: do not buy 9thward skis unless you are willing to gamble your money away at what seems to be horrible odds.
