My Brand Spanking New Fit Well Big Wall boots returned (to retailer) under warranty Why?
Almost without fail when I purchase any sorts of outdoor gear and especially boots, which are ALWAYS purchased from a "physical shop" to guarantee perfect fit; I thoroughly inspect the quality of workmanship first hand before handing over the ghoulash (yes it is indeed a play on 2 words!).
So it came as a total surprise that not soon after I purchased (from a reputable authorised dealer) these boots that an annoying problem was noticed.
For some inexplicable reason I could no longer pull the laces through an upper metal eyelet. In fact when I added a little jungle juice, the lace became shredded! Ah stupid me, I must have had some piece of stubborn grass or stick material caught in the eyelet, after all we were out hiking with them in some rough terrain the other day!
Hold on, no the laces is moving just fine, i checked it??? What gives?
On closer examination this is what I found:
This was for me a bit worrying as it meant whoever inspected this boot didn't look too hard. Or it was known and that this "second" was shipped to "certain" retailers as exactly that. I sincerely hope this was NOT the case. None the less the retailer has taken the boot in question but they are NOT going to ship it back to Fitwell as they say communication is poor (I don't know what that's supposed to mean) and will attempt to correct this oversight via a professional cobbler/shoe smith.
@BushCampingTools
Long time ago I had a similar problem. The shoelaces ripped the material. I returned the shoes and got it back sewn together. Next time another part ripped apart. Sent it back got my money back. So I suggest 0 tolerance with rectification. I believe other rivets will fail the same way. Hence in this case it would have been preferable to press the communication. A picture says a thousand words. The shop in my mind clearly sold second quality products.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately it looks this way to me as well, ie the shop was selling actual seconds released from Fitwell as i just don't believe these boots passed out of the Italian factory un noticed with this fault. I also don't see how it could easily be repaired as the placement of the grommet/rivet has actually buggered up the leather. I never noticed it in the shop when i was trying them on, maybe talking too much, and because it's so small, i was only looking at the general stitching and whether the soles were glued properly. But I'm really hoping they didn't sell off seconds. I don't mind seconds but they must be advertised as such not as brand new.
DeleteWell I have the boots back, the retailer simply "ground off' the offending metal shard. and gave me a new pair of laces as well. If the boots fail me in anyway because of this repair (I needed them for upcoming travel plans) then I will be posting the problem to Fitwell themselves and demand they do something about it. They have a lot of fancy pants people supposedly promoting their stuff but i bet are given the shoes, I'm one of the very few "ordinary people" promoting their footwear in English for free. So let's see how things pan out.
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