I am so down on Penn, the current quality control, and warranty they have. The last bad experience I had was with ****'s sporting goods who wouldn't take a 550 back after I used it a short time, and it proved defective. The fact that ****'s has a pretty liberal return policy got me to thinking that they might be having problems with the 550 series, and wanted Penn to deal with the hassles of greater returns.

Somehow that doesn't sit right with me. You build a product, and you and the retailers in your distribution channel should stand behind that product, if quality is one of your marketing draws.

I'll wait and see how the first generation turns out, like Jackbass said. Then I might be willing to take another look at them.

For now, I lost my perception that they make quality branded products, and it will take a lot of solid performance reviews and comments by fishermen who fish hard to get me back to that level of confidence I once had.

Best of luck to them.