Just got confirmation from Rapala in Finland. They won't send me just the one piece. I have to buy a whole new one from Rapala Canada.
This is why I can't buy nice things.
I got an Esquire watch for my birthday. The battery is dead now. The manual says only get it fixed by Esquire. There's only one Esquire office in Canada. It's in Markham. You know how much it costs to ship by registered mail with insurance to Markham and then have them charge me to service? What if I didn't live that close to Markham? Anyway, I'm gonna get a local jewellery store do it because they say they do it all the time for expensive watches but the point is that the more expensive something is, the more it costs to fix or replace.
Same with cars. You buy a $60k Benz or something and all the parts and servicing cost more than a typical car. Not to mention that the more bells and whistles a car has the more things can go wrong. My uncle experienced this a few times now with his Benz. And I have a moonroof on my car and the tracking broke and after all was said and done I spent $900 to get it replaced. And that was with a used one from the scrap yard installed by Apple Auto Glass! If I went with a new one and done by dealer it would cost $1,900.
This Rapala was the cheapest proper travel rod I had seen at the time 3 years ago and for $57 I said why not. What if I spent $200? What if I dropped $500 on a rod like a couple of guys I met in my time on the water and it's past the 1 year or whatever warranty period? Then you're SOL?
What if I were spending $11 on each jerk bait or crank bait and it gets snagged or a pike snaps it off while bass fishing, etc? Or like my brother in law who spends $25 to $30 on each musky lure and then every once in a while it breaks off on rocks or something?
What about the only expensive pair of shoes I have, which were $120 before tax? Steve Maddens. I wore them once a week to work and never in the winter. Of all my work shoes, they were the ones to break first. The sole separated from the shoe in two places only a few months apart and I've probably not worn them more than a hundred times. Meanwhile, my four other pairs were all under $80 after tax and lasted years and each worn several hundreds of times to more than a thousand times like the pair that finally broke down and I just replaced. Hell, one of them was from Spring and cost me $25 after half off sale and I got them on now for the whatever hundredth time and they're still going strong.
Man, I have three retractables that range from $17 to $20. All of them still going strong. All of them caught fish from bass to pike to sheephead to small salmon. Up to 8lbs. Mind you, I did break an old retractable when I smashed it into another rod in the rod holder on my back cast, and that's my fault, but the point is, I replaced it for $17! So I didn't mind so much.
All I'm left with now is a useless rod with only 3 pieces while the smallest piece of them all cannot be replaced. And it was me boating a fish that couldn't have weighed more than 2.5lbs that broke the rod! Yet all my other rods have so far supported fish when boating them except for one of the $25 ones my cousin was using last year when a pike snapped it.