Dinhternet

I don’t have a lot of shoes. I’ve got a pair of sneakers, a pair of sandals, a pair of boots, and two pairs of dress shoes (black and brown).

My sneakers and my sandals have started to fall apart, so I was looking on FatWallet for deals on new ones. My new favorite place to get shoes is Zappos, an online shoe site that offers free shipping both ways, which is great for when shoes don’t fit right. That happens to me a lot, because my feet, much like the rest of my body, are short but wide.

Anyways, I was going to check out Zappos, but I found a great deal on a brand called Simple Shoes on FatWallet. The brand is a bit more expensive then I normally buy, but I considered it a good value based on the fact that their products are environmentally friendly, and their reviews suggest that the shoes will last for a long time.

By the way, Zappos actually carries Simple Shoes, too, and offers price-matching, but they no longer had the clearance items in stock. According to the Zappos website, the Simple Shoes fit well in length and width, so I ordered my actual sizes for both new sandals and new sneakers directly from Simple’s clearance page.

Got the shipment in a timely manner, but both items were too narrow for me, despite the fact that I ordered the wide sizes. No problem, I’d just ship it back to them and exchange for a bigger size. Went on their website to get the return forms, and I noticed as I was checking size availability for exchange that the price of the “clearance” sandals had gone up $10 since I had ordered them. Filled out the forms like normal, and I noted in the comments section that I noticed that the price had gone up, and I didn’t want the sandals anymore if they were going to charge me the difference. After all, if the shoes had fit properly in the first place, I wouldn’t even have known the price went up.

Shipped the shoes back to them at my own cost; $12, which really negates most of the value I gained from buying clearance items. I got an e-mail confirmation of receipt of return from them, along with a message that the exchange was being processed and they gave me a new sales order for the new shipment. Oh, and a little note that my new shipment was $10 more than my old one, so they would be charging the difference to my card. I immediately shot them an e-mail back, telling them that as I had already stated on the return form, I did not want the sandals if I was going to be charged more for them.

Checked my bank accounts online today and I noticed that the $10 charge was still there. I called up their Customer Service, and after being put immediately on hold, getting transfered to another line and being put on hold some more, I finally got to talk to someone. He didn’t seem to see the ridiculousness of the charge, so I just canceled my whole order. I’m still out my $12 for shipping the shoes back to them, though. If small claims court didn’t have a filing fee of $20, I’d try to get that back, too.

Moral of the story is, don’t buy shoes from Simple Shoes. It takes at least three different messages for them to get anything done.

UPDATE: Despite the fact that George, the customer service guy I talked to, told me my order would be canceled immediately and he would send me an e-mail confirming as much, I just got an e-mail from Simple with the tracking number on my new order.

UPDATE 2: I responded to the e-mail with the tracking number, and asked if it really shipped, since I had canceled the whole order. Got a reply today from a different customer service representative, Janet Mennow, that said they showed no record of my cancellation, and to return it to them, I had to refuse it at the door for UPS to ship it back to them. And she said they would refund the cost of the items to me, but not the cost of shipping.

Tags: Will

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 at 10:45 and is filed under Life, the Universe, and Everything. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.