At 29 years and 6 months one of my Zip Dee Folding Camping Chairs had a fabric (actually a seam) failure. What a bummer! A few years ago I posted this review of the chair.  I figured the second chair might suffer the same demise. It was decision time.

I could buy a couple new Zip Dee chairs for $160 each. Given a 30 year life expectancy, based on the current chairs, that would be a dollar cost average of $5.33 per year. Keep in mind my two chairs have seen thousands of days in use.

Or I could buy a different brand of chair, which probably wouldn’t last as long, and wouldn’t fold down as compactly.

Or?

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

Or I could buy replacement fabric for the chairs. Yep, Zip Dee sells replacement fabric. Not only is the replacement made from Sunbrella fabric, which is an awesome material for outdoor use, but Zip Dee had over 100 different color/pattern choices.

At $40 per chair for the fabric, I could instead purchase a couple cheap chairs that would last a couple years. Or I could replace the fabric on the current chairs and get another 30 years of use, which comes out to $1.33 per year. So I opted the go the replacement route.

Replacement Steps

Pretty easy. Took less than 5 minutes per chair, following the directions on the Zip Dee Website.

The instructions say to use a “hooked wire or coat hanger” to remove the 3 springs. I suppose that will work, but reattaching the springs with the new fabric requires a bit of force. The old material had stretched just a tiny bit over the decades. I think a coat hanger might not be robust enough. So I used this hook tool, which has a handle to hold onto.

Keep in mind that this particular tool has a sharp point, so care must be taken not to slip and damage the fabric. Better to have a hook with a blunt end, which I have somewhere in my toolbox, but I was too lazy to search for it.

Another thing to be careful of, is to make sure the spring goes all the way trough the back of the fabric. It is easy for the spring to sit inside the fabric, and it took a little bit of maneuvering to get it right (see below).

I figure these chairs will be good until the year 2052 at a minimum. This won’t be that important to me, since I would be 101, which is unlikely I’ll live that long.

10 minutes later

An Added Bonus

During my research, I found that new chairs can be purchased with embroidery. Maybe the replacement fabric can also be embroidered, but I didn’t ask.

So I thought, wouldn’t a brand new embroidered chair be a fabulous Christmas gift?

Joyce thought it was!!

Now we have three chairs. If you run into us at one of our remote campsites, we now have an extra chair for the rare visitor.

Zip Dee Customer Service

Zip Dee has a couple authorized distributors (maybe more, I’m not sure). You cannot order anything from Zip Dee’s Website either. However, you can (and are encouraged) call directly.

I called at the beginning of December 2021. The receptionist answered on the first ring, then directed my call to the service department, who answered on the second ring.  My first question was whether I could get the new customized chair by Christmas. Given that Zip Dee’s main business appears to be RV awnings, I wasn’t too hopeful. He checked with production, and said yes.

After getting all the information on the material and embroidery, he told me I would receive an invoice by email when the items were ready to ship and my credit card wouldn’t be charged until then. He then reviewed everything, explained the pricing and total.

On December 14th I received a shipping notice and invoice. On Dec 16th, I received everything.

It sure is nice to deal with companies that immediately answer the phone and whose employees are knowledgable and courteous. A++ for Zip Dee!!

Here’s a link to the  Zip Dee Website.