MEC Montréal – Marché Central

MEC is heaven for outdoors enthusiasts. They sell tons of gear here for all kinds of activities like skiing, kayaking, camping, biking, etc and offer maintenance for equipment like bikes and skis. The selection and quality of the products is fantastic. I have bought lots of clothing, backpacks and so on here over the years and have always been impressed by how well everything holds up despite lots of use.
Another feature worth mentioning is that you can rent gear here like snowshoes so if you’re tempted to try a new outdoor activity but don’t want to buy anything until you have tried it and know you want to commit to it consider renting. There are also a variety of other services like gear swaps and recycling of goods like bike tires and climbing ropes.
Its one downfall is the location. It is not very accessible by public transit and Marche Centrale can be a zoo at times (especially on weekends). Navigating the parking lot and finding parking during these peak times can be annoying. If you can try and come during the week when it is quieter.
You have to be a member to buy anything here since it is a coop. Membership is $ 5 (at least it was a few years ago when I joined) and is good for life so its not an expensive commitment at all. That tiny fee is well worth it though because you will definitely come back time and time again.

OH MY GOD! I feel like I was in heaven. If you are an outdoor sports person like I am, or like outdoor activities, adventures, you could basically spend hours or even an entire day here. They have everything in this location (only this one though, the one on St. Denis is not like the one at Marche Central at all). They have kayaks, any accessories related to any sports, skiing stuff, rentals, biking, camping, swimming… Do I even need to go one? Basically anything you could imagine. The good part is, you could also rent equipment! So if you need anything related to sports, this is the place to go. Just an fyi though, to buy something you need to become a member, and pay 5 $(takes 2 min) but other than that it’s a perfect fun place.

Lots of products. But this place was a zoo and completely filled with people, it was almost hard to navigate. Solid sale section. Customer service was not great and the person was almost rude when checking out.

I realized recently that it’s an easy bike to this MEC up Querbes, in other words way more accessible then I thought. Which could be dangerous, but so far I’m super pleased with this discovery. I love MEC. I love that you can rent gear here, that the staff leave you alone if you want to spend an hour staring at backpacks but will help you assess rock climbing equipment options endlessly as well if you need them too. If the St Denis one is closer to you, you can order stuff from the main one and have it delivered to the other store. It has 2 big floors with camping, biking, climbing, canoe and kayak gear and clothes and shoes for outdoors. It’s well lit, has lots of options in different price ranges, there is no time limit on returns or exchanges: big fan.

The store is really great if looking for equipment for outdoor activities.
But the store is really inconveniently placed in an area where it is difficult to get to if someone does not have a car and needs to take public transportation. The prices are not too bad; it is adequate and reasonable for the quality, size and type of equipment being displayed.
But the reason I give this MEC store 3 stars is that despite an adequate/​decent range of products they sell, the customer service is severely lacking. Whenever I go, there seems to be employees everywhere, but only when you don’t need them or have any questions. Either that or if you ask an employee a question, they would tell you that they will get someone for you who specializes in that department, and no one would ever come afterwards. Almost as if they never called someone for you (empty promises) or they just plain forgot about the customers.
One time, I rode my bike all the way to the store (one hour bike ride), so that I could buy and get bike baskets installed on my bike. I asked the bike installation/​repairmen how the service would work, so they told me to choose what I liked, and consult them before buying. After choosing a basket, the employee was gone. When I asked another bike employee, he said that I had to unlock my bike from outside the store and bring it in-​store for him to assess if he could install it for me. When I came back in with my bike, there were no employees again. When I asked a random employee passing by to help, he ‘could not help because he did not know anything about bikes’ but he would get me a specialist. After waiting 20 minutes, a bike specialist happened to come by and was unaware of my situation and was oblivious to the fact that there was a growing line of other customers who needed their own bikes to be fixed or get something installed behind me. When I asked him if he could help, he said that he was busy filling up an order and that I nor the other customers behind me was not his responsibility and walked off into the back employee room. After about another 15 minute wait and lots of complaining to non-​bicycle specialist employees, a bike specialist employee finally came out from his break and just threw me a random product and told me to go install it at home myself. When I told him I would be willing to pay extra and wait for the store to install it for me, he said that the store already has too many jobs to complete and was already behind on everything. I was fed up at that point and eventually had to buy it and figure out how to do it myself.
Honestly, as much as I love browsing around the store and looking at the the equipment, I would only visit the store for that purpose: browsing. I would not trust the store/​employees for any services, because they are completely unreliable!
Sometimes, I would be browsing their online website for products and I would be interested in seeing it in front of me. So I would call the store to make sure that the store had it (an item) in stock, sometimes the are in stock so I go out of my way to go to the store but I find that the employees I ask to locate the item for me has never even heard of it or the item has been out of stock for weeks.
All in all, the store itself has a lot of potential but the people working for the company needs a serious regrouping or just plain replacement as a whole.

Mountain Equipment is a very special place for outdoor enthusiasts in Canada. It’s our version of REI or Eastern Mountain Sports (for Americans). Back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s it was the best place to come when the fleece jacket was gaining in popularity. If you ever visited the stores in Vancouver you could see that the store was part of the reason for feeding the West Coast lifestyle!
Fast forward to 2014 and they have done an excellent job in keeping up with the times. You can find an excellent selection of camping, hiking, cycling and outdoor gear both name brand and the house MEC label variety. The MEC house brand was always known to be good quality of a very reasonable price (hence the co-​op attitude).
The store here is centred by a very large climbing wall at the back and has a great selection of anything hiking/​camping.
I’ve wanted to check out the café here but have yet to. Tonight it was closed so I’ll save this for another visit.
***Keep in mind… You need to buy a membership to shop here, as it is a co-​op. I bought mine so many moons ago I could not tell you how much they are now.

J’adore le service, le monde est gentils, c’est juste plate que la climatisation soit un peu BOF (entk a mon goût, et je suis difficile à Satisfaire là-​dessus, parce que je suis un malade mental qui adore le froid absolu, tester la machine à un point de non-​retour! Bref, c’était un peu chaud. Je n’enlève pas d’étoile à ça parce que c’est trop insignifiant pour ôter mon sentiment de cliient satisfait à chaque fois que j’y vais. Les gens sont serviable. Bien situé au Marché Central, beau magasin, belle grande surface et bon choix en termes de styles et de catégories. Belle sélection pour enfant comme pour femme et homme. À part la chasse, tout le plein air est déservi avec du moyen de gammes, du haut de gamme et même de très bons produits maison (MEC).

Je suis une grande fan du MEC depuis quelques années maintenant. Ayant grandit en Outaouais, j’ai été chanceuse d’être toujours à proximité du MEC. Mes sacs à dos d’école venaient toujours de là et m’ont durer plusieurs années. Je viens tout juste de jeter mon premier «backpack» que j’ai reçu il y a 12 ans de ça! Il m’a suivi un peu partout autour du monde.
Dernièrement, j’avais besoin de nouvelles chaussures d’exercice, et puisque je voulais essayer celles qui permettent d’avoir l’impression d’être nu pied, c’est là que j’ai dû me rendre pour en essayer une paire. J’ai trouvé celle qui me fallait en peu de temps, mais le service a été un peu lent. J’ai demandé à 2 personnes de m’aider car dès qu’on m’a emmené une paire on me laissait aller mais on né faisait pas de suivi à savoir si elle me faisait, ou bien s’il me fallait une autre grandeur. La même chose m’est arrivée lorsque je suis allée magasiner pour un nouveau backpack l’an passé. Le magasin est très grand et souvent occupé donc je peux comprendre que les commis ont plusieurs clients à servir, mais ils devraient faire un peu attention à bien «clouer» la vente avant de nous laisser à nous même.
À part ça, ils ont des produits de qualité avec une échelle de prix qui permet aux gens avec petits et grands budgets d’y trouver ce qu’il leur faut. En plus, c’est une compagnie bien d’ici, avec un modèle de coopérative que j’aime bien. Il en coûte $ 5 pour devenir membre, donc un petit prix pour supporter la compagnie et leurs initiatives variées.

Have dealt with the Montréal store’s customer service desk on a few occasions, now, and their warranty policy and level of service are the best I’ve ever encountered in retail. Have had broken stuff repaired or replaced without a murm

This place is not worth the effort. I’ll tell you why
1. Their stores are always located in the middle of nowhere… where no man has ever gone before. or simply where public transportation hardly goes, so if you don’t have a car you’d better go somewhere else.
2 The items you see on their website are not the items they have in stock, regardless of what their website may say.
3 The items are not fully depicted in the website, so, for instance, if you are buying a backpack you’ll never know how many compartments it has and details like that.
4. Some of the items are inexpensive, but at the end you get what you pay for. I checked their school backpacks and was not impressed. Checked several items and they were not in stock or the quality was not decent.
5. The employees make every effort possible to ignore the customers, especially if the customer needs some information about where to find a product or specifics about the product.
I went today for the first time and left frustrated, rode on two Metro lines, waited 30 minutes for a bus on the way there and 20 on the way back just to buy nothing because I did not find the things I was looking for, and realized that what they sell is no better from the stuff I can buy at the dollar store or at any sport equipment in downtown Montréal… besides, the employees are not helpful at all, when they see you are going to ask for something they just look the other way and make every possible effort to ignore you.
In conclusion: Don’t waste either your time, or the 5 $ affiliation card.