My Cabrinha Crossbow 2 - 2007 - 12 m ripped in the air while
doing a jump. (The kite was 4.5 month old.)

Warranty by Cabrinha was denied, with the reason that there was a prior damage which Cabrinha and the dealer were not able to show me. After they failed to show me any prior damage, the argumentation was that the kite had a damage because it did not rip straight, that the rip had a little deviation and that this is their replacement policy.

Only at my Kite Beach I personally know 3 people with exactly
the same Kitewhich ripped as well and they were all replaced.
So that seems to be a common problem with this Cabrinha Kite
which is made in China.

Cabrinha's answer to that was:
"I don't disagree that there have been some other claims,
as you point out, but they were replaced for reasons different
to what I have seen here."

Another interesting answer was the one to the missing stiching:
"I see what you mean although it is irrelevant to your claim since
the short amount of unstitching would not have effected or contributed
to the damage. It is interesting nonetheless since I have not seen
this before and it may, or may not, have somehow been caused when the tear occurred."

Sounds that they say that stiching suddenly disappears when the Kite
rips and Cabrinha effectivly says here that Cabrinha Quality problems
such as this missing stiching are not handeld despite the fact that
Cabrinha noticed it and the customer has to live with it.

To me it seems that Cabrinha's mindset is that a Kite is not replaced if it's older, than 3 month, like stated in stamps reply:
www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=26925&whichpage=2

The follwoing sentence from Carbinha supports this theory:
"Given that your kite was purchased on 21/10/06 and was 4.5 months old
at the time of the damage ..."

I don't seem to be the only one having problems as you see in the topic "Cabrinha Switchblade 2 Kites Fold-up in Flight".

Looking for Kiters with similar problems who are interested to join
forces for next steps after warranty was denied.

Thats rude.

They should replace it. You'd think that in todays global kiting economy, with so many kites on the market, companies would try to protect thier reputation by providing excelent sales and after sales service.

At least they've made sure of two things, you won't be buying another Cabrinha and I certainly won't.

The same just happened to me yesterday. I bought a 2007 Crossbow kite brand new 5 months ago, never crashed it on land and after a jump yesterday, it landed on the water, ripped open!!!! YAAAAAAAH! I couldn't believe it.
SHowed it to my local shop, we cannot really see much except a lighter line on the canopy that looks like it hit something. The fact is that it was NEVER crashed. Could it be a chinese sawing machine?
Anyway, I hope warranty will cover the damages.

Cheers.
Julien

did you guys steer them straight down into the water?

even bailing out of kiteloops my kite has never hit the water hard just remember to let go of the bar

quote:

---

Originally posted by prokiteruk

"CRAPINHA had a 6% warrenty rate for this year which is massive. Some kite companies are reporting a 1.5% rate and I know one company that has had 2 kites in Oz that needed replacememt which by the way were demo kites and not customers.

CRAPINHA would be praying to God that this doesn't happen this season. 6% doesn't sound like a lot of kites but when you're making a few 100K then 6% is sh!t loads."

---

It's very interesting and extremely disappointing to hear you say this Martyn. It was only 3 weeks ago that I came into the shop in which you work and spoke to you about the Cabrinha kites. I specifically asked you at the time about their durability having heard that some people had experienced tears in their SB2's. You assured me there was no issue. I subsequently purchased one and now I see you referring to them as "CRAPINHA" and quoting statistics that indicate that they could well be one of the worst made products on the market. One would have hoped that given that you owned 3 Cabrinha kites of your own, and being in the industry, that you would have shared this information when queried at the time. Does a sale mean that much? I only hope that I don't experience any issues with my SB2 as I can assure you that if I do, I will be expecting a full refund. It is obvious that you were privy to information that you chose not to disclose, and in doing so you have misrepresented the product. Adelaide's kiteboarding & windsurfing community is too small for this type of stunt.