The perils of online surf shopping.

Let’s just make one thing absolutely sparkly crystal clear right off the bat. Trident is somewhat old school. Not to the point of only riding single fin boards made from hemp, crushed seashells and recycled chip packets, and only wearing wetsuits made from the skins of sustainably sourced marine mammals who voluntarily beached themselves. We repeat: marine mammals who voluntarily beached themselves. Not seals that have been mercilessly bludgeoned nor cetaceans brutally harpooned or shot or nuked you bloodthirsty savages.

Back to our point. We’re kinda old school. Like buying a wetsuit for example. Trident and some of our compadres all recently needed to get new wetsuits, and soon. Partly due to a pretty weirdly cold winter sea as well as the fact our own wetsuit had more holes in it than the plot of any given Fast and Furious movie. Now, one can buy online for sure. But wetsuits? Clothes? Shoes? Surely it makes more sense to try said items on before purchase. Or is it just us? It’s not unlike a blind date. You really don’t know what you’re getting. Said date may not even be of the same species as you.

Anyway, Trident wants to ensure a good fit and superior quality when it comes to something as critical as a wetsuit. End of.

Order a twinnie, get a beaten up old mountain bike.

Quite a few of our fellow locals invested in a certain wetsuit brand after seeing a pretty sweet deal online. The wetsuits in question appeared to be of reasonable quality, and the price was near ridiculous. Tempting indeed. So, said compadres invested in 4/3’s for the upcoming winter, secure in the knowledge the gear would arrive well before it became cold.

And they waited. And waited. Then they waited some more. Until winter was over. They were still minus the cost of these wetsuits, but the suits themselves had yet to miraculously appear. There’s an old saying. “If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” Like cheap petrol and broccoli that tastes like a Big Mac, be wary folks. There’s a catch. In this instance, buying a cheap suit advertised at ludicrous prices online led to everyone clamouring to buy one. By the time these suits finally arrived, it was mid-summer and about as useful as a fancy air fryer during load shedding.

You can pay immediately – but your goods don’t materialise immediately.

Therein lies one of our main issues. Once you’ve paid for something online, it’s not like you have said purchase in your grubby little paws. No, you have to wait for it to arrive. You wait in good faith. Not unlike another associate of Trident, who bought a set of fins, from another online retailer. Delivery time was say – 5 working days. However, said mate waited longer than the local municipality to fix a pothole for the fins to arrive. Which they never did. The order was subsequently cancelled, money refunded after much missioning, and said retailer lost a customer. Forever.

Then there’s online purchasing stuff like actual surfboards over and above various other miscellaneous equipment. How do you know for sure you’re getting that like-new Al Merrick, miraculously in your correct volume and shape? How do you know that epoxy twinnie will actually arrive looking like it did on Facebook marketplace, instead of arriving looking like something moulded from old bubblegum and shards of glass? It’s like perusing Russian brides online, your eye latching onto a stunning photo of a lady named Ivanannvanitchothivc and entering into correspondence. You talk, you laugh, you fall in love – you arrange for the Russian stunner to visit. At your expense. Only to discover you’ve actually committed to a large box of expired frozen chicken pieces or defective truck parts.

Trident is wary of online surf shopping folks. Mainly ‘coz we’ve witnessed friends being more bitterly disappointed with what they ended up receiving than viewers did with the final series of Game of Thrones. Yet… we can’t help but think we’re perhaps too old school. What’s your online surf purchase experience been like, team? Tune us in the comments. You can win a sticker.