Bought a Seasoft dry suit and it leaks big time

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SBDeadly

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I bought a Seasoft dry suit a few years back and I thought I'd let folks know about my experience. Hopefully it'll save someone else the same trouble I had.

I got the suit read all the instructions and bought the Seasoft products to take care of the suit properly.
My first dive, my right shoulder got wet within minutes of entering the water. By the time my dive was over my whole body was soaked. I tried making adjustments to my neck and wrist seals and entered again. Second dive was no different.

After a couple different dive days I contacted Seasoft about the issue. At first Bruce was accommodating. I sent the suit back. He admitted the seams were bad and said he fixed them. I got the suit back and went diving. The suit leaked in the exact same spot.
I contacted Bruce again and again sent the suit back. This time he said he couldn't find any problems and sent it back to me. Went diving again and it leaked again. Bruce swore the problem was with my neck seal not seating properly. I tried everything up to and including tying a tether around my neck so it was tight but I still got wet. I also replaced the neoprene seal with a silicon seal and still I would get wet in the exact same place.

Now when I attempt to contact Bruce, he no longer responds. Now I'm stuck with a $3000 leaky dry suit.
I've got about 20 dives on this suit and not once did it keep me dry.

A local dive shop told me after the fact that Seasoft is known for having seam issues so I guess I'm just screwed and have to go buy a DUI or something.
 
The perils of being a manufacturer. It doesn't matter how great you do, there is someone not happy and instead of letting us solve the problem they go to SCUBABOARD. So here goes - LEADKING - before you write something like "My understanding is they are out of business" which could really hurt our business if we were NOT out of business why don't you make sure first.

So let's start with that first. We have been in business for 33 years, we are doing great and just had the best January we have ever had in all those years. Our reward, someone carelessly and falsely posts that we are out of business.

Back to the first post - since I cannot tell from your post who you are I am left perplexed. I have always run the company with the philosophy that "until you are happy we aren't happy" concerning drysuits. I have done it that way since 2000 when we started selling suits.

We work extremely hard to give every customer a drysuit that they will love forever and we usually succeed but occasionally there are issues. It is how you solve those issues that matter. We address leak issues very seriously and we will do anything to make sure the customer is happy. But when we leak test the suit and there are no leaks what are we supposed to do? Seriously, what do we do?

Now you say that you have put a new neck seal on the suit and it still leaks - how is that our fault?

You said you have tried to contact me and I don't respond. I don't know how I missed you, maybe your email went away, but please contact me. I sincerely want you to love your suit. My email is bruce@seasoftscuba.com

Thank you.

Bruce
 
One of your former sales representative, when I asked where you were at the 2016 DEMA show, informed me that a one of your employees defrauded you and you had closed.
 
My first dive, my right shoulder got wet within minutes of entering the water. By the time my dive was over my whole body was soaked. I tried making adjustments to my neck and wrist seals and entered again.

Is this a front zip suit where the zipper terminates at the right shoulder? is it a plastic tizip? try putting a bunch of grease right on the end of the zipper if it is just the zipper not sealing well at the end
 
Why don't you test your suit to see where it is leaking? That would sure narrow it down. If you don't have appropriate clamps, if you tie off one arm, put regulator in the other. Put your neck seal over a tank to seal as well as it can. Fill your suit with the regulator. The seals are not going to be perfect but you can do a pretty good job. Use a soap solution to go over seams in the suspect area, including the zipper.
 
I would check the Tizip zipper very carefully. I have the same suit and it leaks when there is a small gap. You have to be absolutely anal about the zipper as any lint or sand will cause it to leak. Grease the zipper well. All my buddies know now to triple check for any small gaps. You can also test the suit by placing a 2 liter bottle in the neck and appropriate sized bottles in the wrists, then hook up the dry suit to a tank and fill the suit. You should be able to see where the bubbles are coming from. PM me if you have additional questions.
 
The perils of being a manufacturer. It doesn't matter how great you do, there is someone not happy and instead of letting us solve the problem they go to SCUBABOARD. So here goes - LEADKING - before you write something like "My understanding is they are out of business" which could really hurt our business if we were NOT out of business why don't you make sure first.

So let's start with that first. We have been in business for 33 years, we are doing great and just had the best January we have ever had in all those years. Our reward, someone carelessly and falsely posts that we are out of business.

Back to the first post - since I cannot tell from your post who you are I am left perplexed. I have always run the company with the philosophy that "until you are happy we aren't happy" concerning drysuits. I have done it that way since 2000 when we started selling suits.

We work extremely hard to give every customer a drysuit that they will love forever and we usually succeed but occasionally there are issues. It is how you solve those issues that matter. We address leak issues very seriously and we will do anything to make sure the customer is happy. But when we leak test the suit and there are no leaks what are we supposed to do? Seriously, what do we do?

Now you say that you have put a new neck seal on the suit and it still leaks - how is that our fault?

You said you have tried to contact me and I don't respond. I don't know how I missed you, maybe your email went away, but please contact me. I sincerely want you to love your suit. My email is bruce@seasoftscuba.com

Thank you.

Bruce

Bruce,

To respond to your question "Now you say that you have put a new neck seal on the suit and it still leaks - how is that our fault? "

The neck was never leaking. I replaced the seal out of desperation. After I replaced the seal, the suit still leaks in the exact same place. My right shoulder.

Here's a snipit of my last email to you. It was sent on 4/8/16 to which I never got a response. I bought the suit in 2013 I think.
"I'm giving up on the suit. I've got about 20 dives on it and all of them wet. The next time I go out I'll either rent or buy a new one. Now I'm just trying to decide what to do with this suit. I don't feel I can sell it to someone else knowing it's going to leak. Is there any kind of recycle program or lemon return policy? "

The suit I bought has the zipper on the back. I tried everything to make sure the zipper seal was good. I tried a little wax, gobs of wax, closing the zipper then having my dive buddy pull on it some more just to be sure. The problem isn't the zipper. The zipper closes to the left and the leak is on the right. I think it's an issue with the seams. Perhaps just a tiny leak but with my gear on and while I'm moving around it gets contorted so water gets in. Maybe that's why you couldn't find it the last time I sent it in. You just block off the neck and wrist seals then dunk it. I'm sure this process finds most leaks but it doesn't duplicate real world usage.

I'm very confident it's a seam issue because my shoulder was getting wet before the water line was even at my neck.

You can probably identify me by searching your email history for "myrddin33" but if not, I can reply to the last email you sent me.
I'd also be willing to change the title of this post (or something else if that's not possible) if we came to some kind of agreement. But since I never got a response to my last email, I figured I was just screwed and this was the only course of action I could think of.
 
A little more about the suit. I bought it through my local dive shop Captain Aqua's. The owner recommended Seasoft. We spent hours taking my measurements then going back and checking them so the suit would fit perfectly. When it first came in I was very happy. The suit fit great. The neoprene seals were new to me. I had never used that kind of seal before but they are way more comfortable than the silicon seals. The suit has very little drag when I'm swimming. The first time I tried the suit on, I fell in love.

The first time I dove with the suit, it didn't surprise me it leaked. Dry suits were still new to me and I was perfectly willing to believe the problem was user error. After 20 dives and trying the suggestions of both Bruce and my local dive shop, I am extremely confident the problem is the suit.
Before I ever went diving I jumped in my pool without BCD, tank or any other gear. Just to get a feel for it in the water. It didn't leak until I put on all my gear and got in the ocean.
 
Bump

Were you able to find our conversation in email Bruce?
 
Dave:

I rarely check scuba board.com, maybe once a month or so but I just found this thread and I went back and checked our email thread which is extensive. You bought your suit in September, 2010 and you sent the suit back in spring 2013.

Here is what I wrote you on May, 13, 2013 at 5:30 AM: Dave: We did a complete immersion test with this suit and there were no leaks. I handled the repairs and tests personally.

At first you were not tucking your neck seal but you realized this was wrong and started tucking and we then discussed that maybe the neck seal was too large and it was possibly leaking.

I wrote you on May 13th, 2013 at 9:50 AM: It (your neck seal) should not be uncomfortable but you should feel as “if this neck seal was any tighter, it would be uncomfortable.” Let me know. I want to make sure though that you are tucking the neck seal to the inside.

You replied that: It doesn't feel that snug. it's pretty comfortable actually so maybe that's the problem, the seal isn't tight enough. I can easily stick 2 fingers between my neck and the seal. In fact that's how I've been doing it.

I wrote to you on May 13th, 2013 at 10:28 AM: Well, that is definitely were your water is coming in then. You should not be able to do that – you should have to squat and pull the neck seal away from the neck to expel air. So here is what you need to do: get a VELCRO strap and put it around your neck and cinch it so that it is tight and snug around your neck. Make sure you have enough weight so that there is adequate air inside the suit and dive the suit. See if it still leaks, I don’t think it will. Then we make the neck smaller so that the strap is not required.

On August 12th, you wrote: I finally made it out yesterday and I brought a strap for my neck. So I put the suit on, folded the seal over and once I thought it was flat and on correctly I had my buddy check it. He agreed it looked good so I put the strap around my neck and pulled it really snug. It was it was so tight it *almost* interfered with my breathing. It happened to be low tide at that time so we had a long surface swim to get to an area with any depth below 15'. Half way out I could feel the water seeping in. When I got back to my truck I took the dry suit off and I was wet head to toe. This is pretty frustrating. I've inspected the suit with a fine tooth comb and I can't find any area that looks like it could leak but now that I've tried the neck strap I feel like I can say with confidence it isn't the seal. But I don't know what else we can do.

On August 12, 2013 I wrote: How much weight were you diving with? My thinking was that with tucked seals it is air inside the suit that creates the airtight seal. If you do not have enough air inside the suit you cannot create that seal, thus the question regarding how much weight. Little weight = little air.

On September 3rd, you wrote: I went diving on Sunday and I wore 40 pounds. Within 10 seconds I could feel water leaking into my suit. I am 100% confident that the water is leaking either from the zipper or from the seams around the zipper. There's no doubt in my mind anymore.

I wrote on September 3rd, 2013 at 10:21 AM: We leak tested the suit by completely immersing the suit underwater and inflating it with air but obviously we have missed something. This is one of those mysteries of drysuits I just cannot understand. I am going to have you send the suit back to us. Give me your address so I can email you a FEDEX label:

You sent the suit back to us again, we went over the suit, blew it up underwater and found no leaks. We cleaned some debris out of the valves and returned the suit to you. In hindsight we should have replaced the entire zipper panel, this would have replaced the area where you felt the leaking. So what I want you to do is send the suit back to us, we will do this now. What I want you to do is mark the spot as carefully as you can to where you think the leak is coming in.

It might be years later but lets see if we can't get this done.

Bruce
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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