Originally Posted by Polaris OBark

These were REI Half Dome and Quarter Dome tents. The cords were sufficiently slack as to make it impossible to put the poles together. There is only so much slack cord you can stuff down a hollow tent pole.

REI's remedy is to simply replace the tent. In the case of the Half-Dome, I said that was incredibly wasteful and asked if they would just replace the cord. Nope. I wound up having to buy my own cord (from them, yes they still sell it) and do it myself.

I am pretty sure I have some older tents that don't have this problem.