I ordered a front squat harness from them and my credit card was charged on June 11th. It is now September 4th. I have not received anything from them and no responses from various emails i have sent requesting the status of my order. They are in New Zealand so I have not called. Maybe I’ll call them late one night. I’m curious if anyone else ordered one and how long it took for delivery.
No, but I was thinking of getting one. But if I takes 3 fucking months to get here then I’m not so sure.
Mine had a similar delay - just picked it up today from the Post Office (UK). I had to email them a couple of times to remind them to send it. They also charged my card (via Paypal) upon order. Hope that helps!
[quote]Doc D wrote:
Mine had a similar delay - just picked it up today from the Post Office (UK). I had to email them a couple of times to remind them to send it. They also charged my card (via Paypal) upon order. Hope that helps![/quote]
It does. Thanks!! Been itching to get my hands on the thing for months!
Wow that has got to be really annoying. Good luck.
Wow, that’s ridiculously unprofessional.
I’m in Australia and have ordered a couple of things from them as their prices are much better than Australian suppliers. Their customer service is crap. I had to email them repeatedly to get them to send what I ordered, they’d claim it was already sent, then 3 weeks later they’d decide actually it hadn’t been. They seem quite unconcerned about the fact that one of the items I ordered hadn’t arrived after 8 weeks and basically regarded me as a pest. It’s a pity their customer service is so crappy because they do sell good stuff.
[quote]DJS wrote:
I ordered a front squat harness from them and my credit card was charged on June 11th. It is now September 4th. I have not received anything from them and no responses from various emails i have sent requesting the status of my order. They are in New Zealand so I have not called. Maybe I’ll call them late one night. I’m curious if anyone else ordered one and how long it took for delivery. [/quote]
Hi Mate,
I ordered one to the UK about 2 years ago and it got here in around 3-4 weeks. Try emailing the owner Steve Thompson, he’s a great bloke very friendly and helpful and see if he can find out what’s going on.
Its a great company and like I said Steve’s a top bloke so hopefully this is just an unfortunate delay.
Hope that helps.
A clarifying addendum to my previous message: the order was placed on Jun 16th. A month later, I emailed to enquire regarding a possible ETA; Steve Thompson replied to reveal that the harness had not been sent, but would be dispatched on the following Monday. When it had not arrived a month later, I emailed again, requesting a tracking number so that I could try to locate where the dispatched package had gone. It emerged then that the harness still had not been sent.
A few days later, it was at last sent, nad I received a tracking number (with which I could only confirm that the package had been picked up by NZ Post, but this was better than nothing). It took about 2 weeks to reach the UK, or at least for Royal Mail to say that UK Customs and Excise had intercepted it, and that I was going to have another £30 of import VAT / clearance fees to pay…
FWIW, I haven’t lifted properly with the harness yet - just chucked an empty bar on it for a feel. It’s definitely very solidly constructed, but I’m wondering whether I should have gone for the smaller size (medium was for chest < 41 inches; mine is considerably more than this, but the harness seems quite long relative to my short-arse torso. We’ll see!)
But as it seems that my experience of customer service was not entirely isolated, or even exceptional, this is perhaps an aspect of business which might benefit from being re-visited.
i got there front squat harness last year. no issues. shipping is a bit of f pain but otherwise i give them two thumbs.
took me 10 days if i remember right.
Coincidentally, I just got mine today.
It is about two months since I placed the order.
My personal opinion is that Steve is an honest man – and I agree with dheeel’s comment on his being friendly and helpful – but the New Zealand postal service must be complete crap. They lost the original shipment of my harness. A replacement finally went out by Express (about 4 days) with them absorbing that extra cost.
I wasn’t a big pest but did send several e-mails over the period.
If I understand correctly, they are unhappy themselves about the shipping problems that were associated with the free (to the customer) shipping that they were using, and were going to go to more premium shipping that would cost more. Enough more that the price would be the same for a US customer just ordering from EliteFTS.
(It was kind of odd that I could buy from New Zealand cheaper than from the US retailer.)
I do expect you’ll need to call or e-mail to get your harness, given that it hasn’t arrived already after all this time. Steve had written me that if a harness doesn’t arrive in – I forget the exact figure – about 2 weeks from the date of shipment (this being in reference to shipping to the US), all hope is lost: it’s never going to arrive and a reshipment is needed.
Well, here’s my review from first day of use:
If this were a mass-market item, it would retail for about $39 as my guess. It comprises two pieces of bent sheet metal (properly thick); a tab and peg welded to each piece; a hole drilled through both pieces with a bolt and nut to connect them; and heavy duty closed cell foam to pad each piece. No big deal.
So when paying $199 or $299 for it, the large premium is for the invention and the small scale of production.
When paying that much a premium, one would hope it was just right.
However, while I ordered the correct size according to their chart (large, and my chest size is 44.5") the bar was not at all near the position normal for a front squat, that is to say, not up at the neck and close to or touching the neck or even close to there.
It was well below the neck and very substantially further forward.
I do NOT think that this was due to an unusual feature of my build causing this. In fact, I expect it is the other way around. A lifter with a larger rib cage than mine and/or thicker upper pecs – both of which are quite common – would I believe have the bar even further in front of the neck.
Now, they sell a model – for a higher price – that has 3 different pegs welded to each piece so that you can choose different positions. Their description had it that you could get different exercise effect this way. I didn’t need that. I just needed the bar positioned as in the standard front squat or very close to it.
I did NOT get it with the pin welded where it is.
I tried using padding, e.g. a folded up towel among other things, at the bottom of the device so as to tilt it back and get the bar closer to where it should be. This took weight off the shoulders and stress off the abs, yielding a quite different exercise.
While I wasn’t able at the gym to come up with anything that fixed the problem with any weight on the barbell, I did find that if I put two 2.5 lb plates on each peg, thus in effect raising the pegs by an inch and a half, this moved the barbell to a correct position.
An inch and a half may not sound like much, but most definitely the exercise did not feel right with the bar as far forward as it is with the pegs as delivered.
I believe I can fix the device by getting some wood blocks of appropriate size and drilling holes the same diameter as the pegs, and having the barbell sit on the blocks.
However, I feel that for $199, or $299 if from EliteFTS, the peg height out to either in the first place be in the correct position when ordering the correct size. On their realizing that the one fixed position wasn’t optimal for everyone, or perhaps not in the standard front squat position for anyone, and that 2 or 3 choices of position would be better, for this price I believe they should have simply done that, period.
Instead they sell a single peg as the standard model and demand substantially more to have one of them be in the correct position, without warning that the single peg may not put the barbell up by the neck. This is particularly problematic when return and reshipment is so ridiculous an impracticality (taking 2 months to get it in the first place, and probably needing to pay $100 shipping to send it back.)
Conclusion:
It is a good device but you may well need either the 3-position model, or may need to modify it in a manner such as described. Otherwise, the barbell may sit considerably further forward than you want, if you consider the correct position to be touching the neck or at least not far in front of that.
Good review, Bill. I also bought the larger size but probably would have been better off with the smaller one. I tried to make it work by taping a 2x4 to the harness near my abdomen to tilt the harness back. All that did was put pressure on my abdomen and make it hard to breathe. I tried moving the 2x4 up higher near my rib cage and that just made it worse. I still haven’t figured out how to make it work. If your idea works I will have to give it a try.
I bought mine a couple of years ago and if I remember correctly it did take several weeks to arrive.
bpeck
Yes, it definitely didn’t work well tilting the harness back.
I’m going to use a somewhat different approach to fixing the problem: I’d prefer the above, but when I suffered a home robbery a while back, most of my tools were stolen and so I don’t have on hand what is needed to drill the holes mentioned.
So instead I took a 1.5 x 1.5" piece of wood, cut to length, and whittled the areas where the pegs are so that the board would sit pretty squarely.
I’ll try it out tomorrow and report how it goes.
I’m sure the bar positioning will be about correct. The question will be whether everything is secure or not.
Well, if it’s not one thing, it’s another.
The 1 1/2 x 1 1/2 piece of wood worked very well. The bar is now almost perfectly placed, not more than perhaps 1/8" from the neck, and everything seems very stable.
But there is another problem with this design.
The base extends quite low, to approximately the height of the pelvic crest.
If squatting deep, or even really at all deep, the base must push between the legs.
It is too wide for this. It is possible to squat deep, but you definitely feel the base jamming itself against the inner thighs.
I stand here now, at a computer at the gym, with a 4" tear in my shorts from how severely this digs in.
There is absolutely no reason I can see for the base to be this wide.
And it is not that my foot placement was unusually narrow. Actually I wound up moving to, what is for me, unacceptably wide for front squats and the problem was still there.
It’s possible that I can cut away material and make this thing useful for me, but for $199 I should not have to do that.
I ordered from them probably a year ago. A month or two goes by, no news, I email them, they are missing a piece, should be out soon, so repeat that process about 2 more times and after several months, same story, I asked them just to refund my money which they did relatively promptly.
Seems like a decent product (although sorry to hear about Bill’s story) but obviously not a well run business at all. I have still never actually tried the thing so I can’t comment on its effectiveness, only the ineffectiveness of the people making the product.
An update:
Steve Thompson e-mailed me to check on my satisfaction with the harness. My problems with bar placement and the base digging into the upper thighs are attributable, it turns out, to this being the wrong-sized harness for me. He is confident that a Medium will solve the problem.
Additionally, I notice on the website that the design is now changed to being considerably shorter, for the purpose of narrow deep squatting. From the picture, it’s obvious that my problem there is solved. There is no way it will now dig into the upper thighs.
The best part is that, while I hadn’t even considered exchanging for size on account of the shipping cost, and hadn’t even imagined a company would willingly eat the large cost involved, Steve is sending me a replacement without my having to make the return. I have, of course, offered to return it if there is a means by which I won’t have to pay anything, but don’t yet know the response on that.
Another good part is that they have switched their shipping now completely over to DHL. As any familiar with this company will know, that means an end to delivery problems.
So, good news all around.
I am very pleased with this, as aside from the thigh-digging problem, once I had the bar in the right place the front squats were fantastic. Absolutely no “fighting” at all as has always been the case before, only great feel and a completely natural and correct groove. So having the problems solved will be a really good thing.
(Edit) Further update: I have learned from Steve that a Medium fits most people 90% of the time, and he gave as an example a 253 lb powerlifter with a larger chest than mine for whom the Medium is the correct size. So I would suggest, if the sizing chart indicates for someone wanting the harness that they should buy a Large, corresponding with Steve first. Apparently it really does not come down to a single number such as chest measurement as to what size will fit correctly.
I’ve never ordered from these guys, but I recently had absolutely horrible experience with both apt powerwristwraps and elitefitsystems, both companies were completely incompetent and then unprofessional in the manor they handled their incompetence. I wouldn’t recommend them. The lengths I’ve gone through to get an order placed and then shipped to me was ridiculous and complete rip off.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
An update:
Steve Thompson e-mailed me to check on my satisfaction with the harness. My problems with bar placement and the base digging into the upper thighs are attributable, it turns out, to this being the wrong-sized harness for me. He is confident that a Medium will solve the problem.
Additionally, I notice on the website that the design is now changed to being considerably shorter, for the purpose of narrow deep squatting. From the picture, it’s obvious that my problem there is solved. There is no way it will now dig into the upper thighs.
The best part is that, while I hadn’t even considered exchanging for size on account of the shipping cost, and hadn’t even imagined a company would willingly eat the large cost involved, Steve is sending me a replacement without my having to make the return. I have, of course, offered to return it if there is a means by which I won’t have to pay anything, but don’t yet know the response on that.
Another good part is that they have switched their shipping now completely over to DHL. As any familiar with this company will know, that means an end to delivery problems.
So, good news all around.
I am very pleased with this, as aside from the thigh-digging problem, once I had the bar in the right place the front squats were fantastic. Absolutely no “fighting” at all as has always been the case before, only great feel and a completely natural and correct groove. So having the problems solved will be a really good thing.
(Edit) Further update: I have learned from Steve that a Medium fits most people 90% of the time, and he gave as an example a 253 lb powerlifter with a larger chest than mine for whom the Medium is the correct size. So I would suggest, if the sizing chart indicates for someone wanting the harness that they should buy a Large, corresponding with Steve first. Apparently it really does not come down to a single number such as chest measurement as to what size will fit correctly.[/quote]
That’s great to hear Bill. I live in the UK and as I mentioned previously I’ve always found Steve to be very helpful and have a great company.
[quote]js385787 wrote:
I’ve never ordered from these guys, but I recently had absolutely horrible experience with both apt powerwristwraps and elitefitsystems, both companies were completely incompetent and then unprofessional in the manor they handled their incompetence. I wouldn’t recommend them. The lengths I’ve gone through to get an order placed and then shipped to me was ridiculous and complete rip off. [/quote]
Sorry to hear this man. I’ve actually found the complete opposite, I’ve made 10+ orders from APT and Elitefts and have found them on occaision to send more than I ordered! If you live outside of the US shipping can be expensive but I’ve had fantastic customer service everytime.