First let me say I am a fan of REI and their products, so I'm not dissing them in any way, just relating my experience.

On my last AK trip we got hit by a severe storm that trashed the poles on three tents, one Big Agnes tent and two REI tents. These were high-quality tents and I wanted to repair them, not toss them and buy new ones.

Turns out REI doesn't do repairs on their tent poles, they refer them out to Tent Pole Technologies, In checking with TPT, the repair cost for the damage I had would be about half the price of a new tent.

Turns out Big Agnes does their repairs in house and wanted to help in any way they could to prevent the tent from "ending up in the landfill." Their charge is $5 for each tent section that needs repairs. In addition, when they saw I am an outfitter, they waived the repair charge in total and are only charging for shipping.

Guess which brand tent I will be purchasing in the future.