Diary of a Hoop Journey

Andrea Merin and I decided to buy a basketball hoop.

It really should have been that simple. But alas, this basic task became one of the most circuitous and memorable experiences of our life together.

Before I continue, I want to address the general topic of this article. I have an appreciation for those that subscribe to the, "I got engaged and here's what I learned about B2B sales" crowd. I understand to many, LinkedIn has become too much SOCIAL media and not enough business. So let me clear up what this story will be about. First, and foremost, it will be about people. Next, it will talk quite a bit about businesses. When I wrote the original post, I took care to not name companies or individuals. This article has all the names. The reason is because while there are companies that did a terrible job, there are also companies that did a fantastic job, and fair is fair. Everybody deserves to be noted for what they did and didn't do, and reputation is important. If you've done business with these companies in the past, you may have had a completely different experience, and I'd love to hear that.

Why Basketball?

For those with a good memory, I wrote a post about this here. At best, the post is a snap-shot of a portion of the story, but due to length restrictions, even that left out several details.

So where does this story really start? I think, if I'm being honest, it starts in my own childhood. I wasn't raised in a sports-focused household, so where does my own interest in basketball come from?

Growing up in the center of CT, most of my friends' sports allegiances drifted either to Boston or New York. You typically had to choose. We had no professional sports teams of our own, save the Hartford Whalers, which is another article unto itself. Most of you know them as the Carolina Hurricanes, where they have now played longer (and certainly more successfully) then they ever played in Hartford. CT was basically a ghost state when it came to professional sports. Then, 1990 happened.

In the winter of 1989-1990, I was 12 years old when the UConn Husky's Men's Basketball team came of age. For the first time, UConn won the Big East Tournament. They were awarded a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. They made it to the Elite 8 before Christian Laettner and Duke stole our hearts. But for every kid coming of age in CT at that time, we were hooked. Everybody knows what happened next; from Jim Calhoun to Kevin Ollie to Dan Hurley on the Men's side to Geno Auriemma on the Women's side, UConn has become the dominant program in college basketball with 17 National Championships in the last 30 years. This year the Men's Elite 8 was in Boston and I got the chance to go with both of my brothers and my daughter and watch UConn on the way to back-to-back National Titles.

Basketball is a passion of mine. But the reality is, I'm a sub-6'-0", not exactly fleet of foot, white guy who was already nearly 13 when I discovered the sport. No matter how much I enjoyed the game, my own playing career was decidedly brief when it came to organized basketball. Therein lies the other thing I love about the game. You don't need a team. You don't even need other people. You just need a hoop, a ball and yourself. There is no other team sport that really works that way. You can't toss a football or a baseball to yourself. I guess you can shoot a hockey puck or a soccer ball at a net, but somehow without someone there to stop it, it just seems like repetition.

But if you have a hoop and a ball, you can play. You can imagine you're in the Garden (Boston or Madison Square) taking the last shot. You can work on your dribbling. You can throw it up and learn rebounding angles. You can play the game.

Hoop History

So when I discovered this as a teenager, I asked my parents for an in-ground basketball hoop. Graciously, they said yes. There was just one catch. I had to install it. So I did . . . but not well. This was when adjustable hoops had first come out. Many of you might remember them. You needed a wood pole with a grip on the end to basically raise and lower the hoop. I tried to find a picture of one, but they don't really make them this way anymore, for good reason. Suffice it to say, my installation was very sub-par. I didn't have the right tools. The hoop was never level. It never adjusted correctly. We lost the pole, and eventually the hoop just kind of settled into one position, way too low, and constantly sagging. My sub-6'-0" self could dunk on it. If you hit the backboard, the whole thing shook, and sometimes if you hit the side of the rim the whole hoop would turn and you'd have to bring it back. Eventually, after several summers of constant wear-and-tear, it just fell apart. So we bought another one . . . and did an even worse job of installing that one.

Eventually, the hoop got removed, the pole got cut off, and by the time my father sold the house many years later, there was no sign a basketball hoop had ever existed.

I grew up, basically abandoned playing the game, maintained my fandom, particularly for college basketball, but left any need for a hoop behind.

The Kids are the Difference

In 2018, Andrea and I started looking for the house in the community we wanted to raise our kids in. We saw one we loved, and when we walked in the back yard, there was a portable basketball hoop. When we made the offer, we inquired if the then current, now former, owners would be willing to sell us the hoop with the house. We knew they were moving out of state, so we thought it was possible. They were not willing. We bought the house, but we were still hoop-less.

In 2020 during COVID, we realized we needed to make better use of our backyard. We bought outdoor furniture, multiple shading devices that have since been destroyed (an article for another day), a new grill, and several other items to try to make the backyard more usable. But still, no hoop. The kids were 5 and 2, and I just couldn't justify the investment when I still had no idea if that was something they would be interested in.

Fast forward to this past winter. First, our 9-year-old daughter started playing basketball with a friend at recess and asked us to get her a ball so she could bring it to school. We suggested that she play on a team, but she wasn't interested. Then, our 6-year-old son asked if he could play on a team . . . and he did! Suffice it to say, he was terrible! But I loved every second of it. He played hard, and by the end of the season, he had started to figure out dribbling and was even getting the ball up somewhere near the rim. When we asked him if he wanted to play again, he was excited. Our daughter, having witnessed all of our son's games, also decided she wanted to play on a team going forward.

It was time to buy a hoop.

Buying Strategy

Now, there are a lot of reasons Andrea and I are partners in life. But one of the ones that I often tell people about when they ask about relationships is that Andrea is the best partner I've ever had when it comes to making a big decision in life. We've made so many together, and while we don't always agree, our fundamental process is usually very similar, if not identical. We often disagree on timing, but rarely on process. That is most evident when it comes to major purchases. While a basketball hoop isn't on the scale of our real estate decisions, it is a significant amount of money, so I didn't want to take it lightly.

For us, the way to make any purchase is to first figure out exactly what you want to buy (down to the exact model and features), and then figure out where and how to buy it at the best price you can find. I learned we shared that mentality very early in our life together. In 2009, when she first moved in with me, I had a 27" television. This was 2009, and it was not a flat screen. It was big, heavy, and not exactly high quality by that point. I had already been thinking of getting a new TV, but as has been the case numerous times in our life together, Andrea adjusted my time-table. We went together to the Sony store in Copley Place, very quickly determined which model we wanted, and then setout to figure out the pricing and how to buy it. Suffice it to say, that experience was one of the best buying experiences I'd ever had, primarily because of the person I got to do it with, and it told me everything I needed to know about those kind of decisions moving forward. We never looked back.

I have an article coming out in the next few months about business partnerships. In reality, I think all partnerships are the same. The details just change. At the end of the day, do you trust your partner? Are they looking out for your best interests as well as their own? You do not have to agree on the decision, but you have to agree on the process of making it. You have to agree that the partnership needs to exist above all else. If you can do that, you tend to find common ground on your journeys together even if the outcomes sometimes vary.

When it came to a basketball hoop, the only thing I knew was that in-ground was not an option for us at this house. We live on the side of a hill, and the right side of our driveway has a beautiful 1935 retaining wall with beautiful, massive, and completely unmovable trees all along it. There was no way to put a basketball hoop there. There was some possibility to putting an in-ground unit in the backyard, but I couldn't come up with the right spot.

I also considered the above-garage type. But honestly, we have a slate roof and a dormer, and I wanted something we could adjust the height on because I knew right off the bat the kids can't really play at 10'-0". Even our son's league last winter was on 8'-0" hoops.

I spent hours scouring the internet. I found brands I had heard of, brands I had not. I read Amazon reviews. I found websites a plenty with recommendations. I found hoops for $400 and hoops for $4,000. But the trauma of my childhood hoop experience kept coming back to me and keeping me from making a decision, for fear of wasting money on something that ultimately would not be right for our family.

Then, I got lucky. I was having a conversation with my colleague, Michael Bouchard, who graciously told me about the hoop his family had bought during COVID. At that point they had had it for a few years and loved it. It was durable and high-quality and he felt like it was a hoop his family would be able to grow up with, which is exactly what I was looking for. He did warn me that the installation was difficult and pointed out he had ended up hiring someone because it just proved too much. I should have listened to that part more clearly. It will come back later on.

The model that he bought was made by Spalding. It is simply called, "The Beast". Feel free to look it up. It is not inexpensive. It is rarely stocked in any store. But in terms of quality and in terms of buying something that I thought our kids could grow up with, it was exactly what we were looking for.

I've already covered how Andrea and I buy things. We had now completed step 1. We knew exactly what we wanted to buy. Now we had to figure out where to buy it and how to get it for a price we were comfortable with. We sat down and discussed where we thought we wanted to be price-wise and set out looking. We also knew, from my conversation with Mike, that we needed someone to install it. My childhood hoop installation trauma was very present in those conversations.

We tried scouring the internet. Spalding was selling it on their website, but that was the most expensive price we found, and they didn't seem to offer installation any longer. I should have taken that as a sign.

Then, a funny thing happened. The kids are playing both baseball and soccer this Spring, and one right after the other, we got emails from Dick's Sporting Goods telling us that we could get a significant coupon against a purchase on selected days as long as we went to the store. This fit our philosophy perfectly!

One of the other reasons our partnership works well is that we're pretty good at doing things the other doesn't enjoy doing. In my case, I really don't like calling stores or even talking to people in them. I worked in retail for years, and I know that as someone working in retail, the thing you hate most is picking up the phone. A customer in front of you is one thing, but a phone call is usually somebody upset, or somebody asking for information you probably don't have anyway. But Andrea is very good at that part, so she called the store to specifically ask if they would accept the coupon and if we could order the hoop. She was told yes.

Time to Buy!

On Saturday, March 16th, 2024, we went to Dick's Sporting Goods in Natick, MA to buy our basketball hoop. This was the first of the two weekends the coupons identified as being eligible for the discount. When we got to the store, we went to the basketball hoop section, excited to place our order and get the whole process setup. We were told by the very nice associate that they couldn't help us there and that we would need to go to the front desk. When we got to the front desk and talked the store manager, we were basically politely told that since the hoop wasn't available in that (or any) store, there was no way for us to order it and use the coupon. We would have to order it online and then the coupon didn't apply.

This was not what we had been previously told, but they weren't going to budge. So we left, we regrouped, and we adjusted our strategy with the new information. We knew we had one more weekend coming up (the following weekend); now using the other coupon. Andrea called the Dick's online support number but didn't get much further. We figured we would wait a week, try a different store, and if that didn't work out, our worst case was we were ordering it from Spalding sans coupon and figuring out installation. It was more then we ideally wanted to pay, but sometimes it is what it is and you find other places in your budget to make adjustments.

On Friday, March 22nd, we went to Dick's Sporting Goods in Dedham, MA. Unlike Natick, here we found store management that was much more interested in selling us the hoop. They said we could use our coupon and a wonderful associate there helped us place the order. We finally thought we were on our way.

But alas, even that wasn't smooth. In order to place the order, the associate had to use a different computer system then their typical point of sale, as well as enter a special code to accept the coupon. Twice, as she got to the point of getting ready to place the order, the computer system shut itself off . . . like, completely powered down and died, requiring a reboot. Once again, this should have been noted by us as a sign from the Universe.

Finally, we got it to work. Andrea did the typing while the associate read her the information to enter. With painstaking keystrokes and a lot of slow breathing, we managed to place the order. The official timestamp is 8:03 pm on 3/22/24. But finally, we had ordered our hoop! We asked about installation and were told that the way it worked was that the hoop had to be delivered to our house, then we were to come to the store to setup the installation.

After what we had been through to date (not realizing how early in the overall process we were), we thought that was fine. So off we went. We were told the delivery company would contact us with a shipping date. We got a call a few days after that telling us that the hoop would arrive on Friday, April 5th. We made plans to be home that day so that we could receive the shipment. On April 3rd, we were told that instead of coming April 5th, they would be there April 4th; a day early. We were told if we could not be home, they would leave the hoop outside. Not wanting to risk that, Andrea and I made arrangements for her to be home. The hoop was delivered without a significant hitch. At this point, this is what was in our garage.

Time to Assemble . . . or Not

On the evening of April 5th, we went to Dick's in Dedham to schedule our installation. Once we paid for it, we worked with a very helpful associate who setup the process. He gave me a lot of useful information, including all of the phone numbers I would need and the knowledge that the installation company, a subcontractor to Dick's, would be calling me within 24 hours to setup the installation date. One thing I should have noted at the time, but disregarded, is that the system didn't accept the model number of the hoop. He had to type it in manually to let them know specifically which hoop they would be assembling. That should have been another clue of what we were in for.

The name of the installation company is AIT. I had never dealt with them before. I didn't know anything about them. I've since learned quite a bit. AIT, also known as AIT Worldwide Logistics, is a global freight, warehousing, distribution and logistics company. They are headquartered in the Chicago area, but the group that handles this work for Dick's is out of Jersey City, NJ. Their company covers North America, Europe and Asia. In 2023 their gross revenues were 1.9 billion. I would later find out that this minute part of their business wasn't even really handled by them. They essentially served as middle-men, doing the scheduling and passing the work off to local independent contractor installers. So the hoop was being installed by a subcontractor to Dick's subcontractor.

But we didn't know any of that at this point.

My previous post detailed a lot of the initial installation scheduling issues, so I won't completely regurgitate all of that detail here since you can read it, but I will elaborate and add some detail I was forced to cut-out because of post length limits.

On Day 2 of the installation scheduling nightmare, I called the Dick's store in Dedham and spoke to the manager. By that point, I knew I was in AIT's hands and Dick's couldn't do anything, but I wanted them to know exactly how their partner was treating us. The manager, who was wonderful, offered to refund our installation fee, but told me in order to do that I would need to come down to the store. She was there until 4:00 that day, and out of respect for her time, I told her I would be there by then. As we were leaving to go to the store, the AIT subcontracted installers showed up. Andrea and our son stayed home and I took our daughter to the store. I walked into the store at 3:30 PM. The manager was wonderful and issued me a refund.

We got back in the car and headed for home. We got 2 miles from the store when Andrea called to tell me the installers were saying the hoop was defective. It wasn't, but that's coming up in a little while. I promptly turned around and went back to the store to catch the manager who was coming off shift. She very graciously stayed and with the incoming store manager tried to help me resolve the problem. By that point the installers had left. Because no store has this hoop, the only thing we could do was call Dick's online support folks since that was where the order was placed. The store couldn't help us any further.

This was Saturday, April 13th. After that, the hoop sat, unassembled, in pieces, in our garage FOR SEVEN WEEKS. I don't have a photo of that because every time I went to take one I got so angry that I couldn't.

We spoke to Dick's and they said that if Spalding would replace the poles with ones that were not defective, they could get an installation crew back out to finish the installation. Dick's had tried to contact Spalding, but to no avail.

On Monday, April 15th, I contacted Spalding. Their customer service was wonderful and sent me two options. The first was instructions on how to assemble the pole and how to separate it if it is installed incorrectly. They also sent me a warranty claim to use if the poles truly were defective. They told me that their typical process (which is printed in the manual) is that if you try to put the poles together and have an issue, to contact Spalding directly immediately, not the store. So on top of what we would later learn, the installers completely disregarded those clear instructions.

From here, we went back and forth with Dick's for over a week trying to figure out what to do next. By this point Andrea had taken over the phone conversations. Andrea has the reputation as the nicer of us, and it's well-deserved and earned. But what people don't know is that I'm the pushover. I tell everybody that once you get to her, it's over for you. You will lose. It will happen very nicely and you'll feel good about yourself afterwards, but you have no shot. She will get what she wants.

The problem was that we had no confidence that even if AIT had a crew that knew what they were doing, there was no way it would get scheduled correctly and there was a good chance they would never show up. We also couldn't determine whether the poles were actually defective or whether it was an installation error.

I took a video of the poles to send to Dick's to try to address this issue. Pay close attention to the stickers marked "rear". You will notice the problem. Not being the expert, however, I didn't want to be the one to make this determination.

Fixing Fitness to the Rescue!

On April 23rd, my colleague Mike gave me the name of his installer. At this point, I met Craig from Fixing Fitness. After another week of going back and forth with Dick's and AIT, I called Craig on April 29th and scheduled him to come out on May 7th. Craig was very clear that it was unlikely that the poles were defective (he'd never seen defective poles in 10 years) and that it was more likely they were assembled incorrectly. He said unfortunately it was hard to tell that from a photo and that he wouldn't know until he got here. He would have to charge us part of the installation fee even if he made the trip and couldn't help us. I understood. This certainly wasn't his fault and I'm an advocate for people getting paid for their work, especially when they haven't done anything wrong. So I agreed to all of that.

On May 2nd, a different AIT subcontractor showed up, essentially without warning, to finish the installation. Andrea was in the shower when they arrived. She politely (once she got dressed) informed their installer we didn't have a need for their services and sent them away.

Craig showed up exactly on time on May 7th, and almost instantly informed me that this was not a defective pole but an installation error. The poles had been assembled 180 degrees off from where they should have been. Even had the original installers managed to get them all the way on, they would have eventually gotten the hoop up and realized the whole thing was backwards and wouldn't have been able to finish.

Craig spent a few minutes trying to separate the poles but we both knew that was unlikely at best. He left, and Andrea and I went back to the phones.

Spalding vs. FedEx

I contacted Spalding, to see if we could get new poles. I fully expected to have to pay for them. I sent them the video above, essentially proving it was an installation error. To our overwhelming shock, Spalding agreed to replace the poles for free. On May 8th, they setup two shipments (each pole is around 40 pounds). I got tracking numbers for FedEx. I scheduled Craig to come back on May 17th.

Both packages were shipped from Spalding's location in Alabama on May 8th. One part arrived on May 11th. The other seemed stuck in Georgia. On May 13th, I opened a case with FedEx. I was asked to provide a bunch of information. FedEx still has not gotten back to me. When I click on that package as I'm writing this article, here's what I see:

On May 15th, I contacted Spalding regarding the missing package. Unbelievably, once again at no cost, Spalding sent out a new pole section. It arrived on May 19th. We now had both replacement pole sections. I contacted Craig and rescheduled him for May 31st.

I want to take a minute to say that if you are looking for a basketball hoop, I highly recommend Spalding. I realize they aren't the least expensive ones on the market, but their customer service has been nothing short of amazing. They have been easy to get a hold of, incredibly responsive, and the fact that they sent not one, not two, but three replacement parts for something that wasn't even their fault tells me everything I want to know about how they view customer service. I realize that this is just warranty claim for them, but they didn't have to do that. But they stand behind their product and they stand behind the experience they want their customer to have.

We still had the issue of the original pole. Imagine a 10'-0" long, 6"x6" steel tube that weighs about 100 pounds sitting in your garage. How do you get rid of that? I checked my app for the City of Newton and found out they wouldn't take it. It wouldn't have fit in any vehicle we own, even if I had thought we could lift it. I had no idea how to get rid of this. But Andrea wasn't done. She was able to help Dick's understand that they needed to come get the pole. On May 20th, the improperly assembled pole was picked up.

Time to Assemble!

On May 31st, Craig showed up and finished the installation. The video of him assembling the pole correctly is priceless.

It took about 2 hours. He assembled this hoop by himself. If you are in need of someone to build any kind of fitness equipment for you, I highly recommend Craig. He is the owner of Fixing Fitness and I would be happy to share his information. He covers all of New England and is very experienced.

Customer Service?

I don't have anything positive to say about AIT. They are a massive, global organization and this is clearly not one of their core businesses. I assume Dick's does business with them because of their scale and I'm sure that (as well as price) was one of the driving reasons behind where their partnership came from. But, in business, and in life, you are only as good as your partners. If you choose to trust your reputation to someone else, you need to be absolutely sure that they will represent you in the best way possible, perhaps even better then you would have represented yourself. The opposite happened here.

Dick's did a lot of things right. The Dedham store was truly wonderful to deal with and went out of their way to try to support us. The national Dick's representatives that Andrea worked with tried very hard to make this right for us. But their hands were tied with a sub-standard partner and no ability to fix the situation. In the end, Dick's lost. Not only did they refund us the original installation fee, but they refunded us both of the fees for Craig's visit and an additional amount beyond that. I have no idea if AIT got paid by Dick's. I have no idea if AIT's subcontractor got paid either time they visited us.

So I'm going to give Dick's credit for trying to make it right. I won't hesitate to shop there again, although I certainly will not be making use of any kind of installation services in the future.

As for us, well, see for yourself:

Final Thoughts

I'll leave you with a few bigger ideas, which I think apply to business, to life, and to our society.

How we treat others matters. We saw that from Dick's. We saw it from Spalding. We didn't see it from AIT, or FedEx. Is that a scale issue? Maybe. It's not fair to speculate, but at some point, Andrea and I both dealt with humans at AIT and FedEx, and in both cases, they didn't really help solve our problem. We had names of people. We had direct phone numbers. We had case numbers. We had all of the information we needed, and time after time, we either got no response, or someone who just couldn't help us move the problem forward.

My kids just wanted to play basketball. They were so excited when we bought the hoop. It took exactly 10 weeks from the night we purchased it until they could play on it. For a 9-year-old and a 6-year-old, that might as well be 10 years. They've been out there every day since, more then once a day. As a father, the idea that I can give my kids this kind of experience means everything to me.

Many people seem to really need to distinguish between business and personal. For me, business is personal, because it is about people. A story like this may seem like a personal story, but ultimately it is about how you engage with the people around you, which is how I view business. For us, this was a significant amount of money. Many nights I came home and walked through the garage while muttering to myself how much money was sitting in pieces on the floor. When you have clients or customers, you are playing with somebody else's money. You have to treat that with the utmost respect, which sometimes is difficult to remember to do.

I know this was a great lesson to me. We are very aware that to companies like AIT and FedEx and even Dick's and Spalding, we aren't very important. This is a tiny transaction for all of them in their overall annual business. But yet Dick's and Spalding chose not to treat us that way, and for that, they have earned my business going forward.

I really do look at life the same way. The people who treat us like individuals, who see us in the way we want to be seen and take the time to honor that commitment are the people who I most want to give my time to. They are investing in me and so I need to invest in them.

Lastly, I didn't have to include the first third of this article. I could have just started with us buying the hoop, but I think context is important. I think trauma is very real. There are people I know who know much more about it then I do, but all of us who have experienced the last four years have trauma that we may or may not be aware of. I think understanding how previous trauma and my own goals as a parent further inflamed this situation adds context and shows why we made some of the decisions we made. I think sharing these things may encourage and embolden others to do the same. Only through that will we find a path through the trauma together. It can be something as innocuous as a basketball hoop, or something as serious as life and death. Regardless of what it is, trauma affects us all in ways we don't always see on the surface.

If you've made it to the end, I thank you for reading. I truly am humbled that people choose to engage on this platform and use your precious time to read my work. I hope you enjoyed it, maybe laughed a little, but overall found something to connect to. If you did, don't be afraid to comment or even reach out to me separately. I'm always happy to get all of your thoughts.