Reader Reviews

Rating: 5 / 5

Balanced, intelligent, in-depth, and open minded reviews on cutting edge gear. After a year's worth of BPL reviews, I can't believe the blatant advertisements that pass as reviews in other outdoor magazines. The features and techniques articles are excellent resources, with information that cannot be found elsewhere.

The website itself has a great format and is one of the most reliabe sites in my favorites. Good customer service. The entire BPL staff shows great integrity and professionalism.

BPL earns a sixth star with the Make Your Own Gear section.

$25 for a year is a steal.

Rating: 3 / 5

Your '5' is gracious but I'm giving BPL.com a '3' for now.

If you pay $25, or $5, or $100, it doesn't matter. The product quality needs to be exceptional.

Customer service to date has been seriously lacking and not up to industry standards. As of one week ago, we are making dramatic improvements in this area: we hired a customer service director, we've added more self service functionality to the MY ACCOUNT page, and make big changes in how backordered and prepurchase availability info is communicated to subscribers, added automated order returns, and customer support issue management, all from within the BPL.com website.

The biggest change to customer support, in addition to our new hire, is bringing it back in house where all of your support issues, contact record, subscription info, and order history are managed from a single administration interface on our backend. You don't see it, but it makes our ability to address your issues fast a whole lot easier.

The shopping experience has been redesigned and streamlined, and article display pages have been redesigned in recent days.

However, there are glaring holes here, still:

1. A powerful site search engine. That's our current major initiative at this moment. Site search will integrate all sections of the site and not leave forums and reader reviews hanging out there with their own search pages. The new site search will also actually work to help you find what you're looking for.

2. Better access and display of gear guide items.

3. More functionality in the community sections: forums and reader reviews. Upgrades slated for the next release include user 'home' pages at BPL.com where you can view a user's forum/review history, recent/new reviews posted, and more integration between those two sections.

So, stick around. Lots around the corner, as always.

Ryan Jordan
Publisher
BackpackingLight.com

Edited by ryan on 08/07/2005 00:22:49 MDT.

Rating: 4 / 5

I read all of the free articles, and after looking at the abstracts of the Premium articles, I immediately bought a membership. That was well worth it right there. I've also more than saved the price of the membership in discounts when buying stuff at BPL.

The 4 is because the website isn't as great as it could be, but it has been improving.

Rating: 4 / 5

I am so glad I found this website, before this site I was carrying a 30-40lb pack, after reading the articles I got my list under 10, and after joining the forums, well carrying less than 4 pounds is usual for me. it is true, knowledge = 0.0oz, and is more valuble than any peice of gear.

the one thing that brings this down to 4 is the gear shop, It dose have the best gear on the planet and I am not disapointed with the quality of the products or customer support or membership savings, just the gear is often out of stock, if the products were in stock more often than not, and I would not have to backorder, this site would deserve a 6/5

thanks Ryan J,
your site is almost perfect

Edited by ryanf on 12/31/2005 22:22:56 MST.

Rating: 3 / 5

when i first found the site i was like what ever, i am carring a happy 20 lbs. i always read ads about the gear but could never find the reviews until now. thanks bpl.com

the reason i gave it a 3 was b/c i paid to be a member, then turned around and paid for the magazine subcribe. i think they should set a prize on for that. i get the snail mail version, b/c i need some to read on the trail. but i like the fact they have the old back magazine still stock so you can do your reviews and stuff.

Rating: 5 / 5

1. Being able to have a picture and a little information about us all and a possible way to send a private email to other members.
2. A list of all our replies to threads in date order. This alone is worth a 5 to me. In the past it was very hard to remember who said what and where. This feature makes finding old information a lot easier.