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A blog wherein a literary agent will sometimes discuss his business, sometimes discuss the movies he sees, the tennis he watches, or the world around him. In which he will often wish he could say more, but will be obliged by business necessity and basic politeness and simple civility to hold his tongue. Rankings are done on a scale of one to five Slithy Toads, where a 0 is a complete waste of time, a 2 is a completely innocuous way to spend your time, and a 4 is intended as a geas compelling you to make the time.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

the anti-rant

I complain a lot about things I'm not happy about, so I'd like to take a quick moment to say some nice things about Skechers.

I had a problem with a pair of dress shoes I got from them. I noticed during BEA at the end of May that there was a flapping noise when I was walking, which I ignored for a few days and then kind of looked at the shoe and noticed that the leather by one of the buckle seams was coming apart near the seam and slowly spreading. Not happy-making, I'd just started wearing the shoes for my London Book Fair trip several weeks before, and maybe had worn the shoes for a total of ten, twelve, fifteen days when I needed dress shoes. Shoes shouldn't fall apart that quick, usually I wear the soles down from putting miles on a pair of shoes long before other parts of the shoe start to fall apart.

I eventually got around to taking a picture of the shoes, and I wrote a letter to the head of Skechers to say I was not happy. I couldn't just return them because I'd purchased them some months before, and I'd worn through pair #1 from that purchase before starting in on pair #2.

Well, a few days later a real human person called from Skechers to say that they were sorry to hear about my experience. They wanted to take a look at the shoes, and sent a call tag for Fed Ex to pick them up from me. And then after they looked at the shoes, they said they would happily send me a new pair. And then when I told them what style I wanted (that particular no longer in the warehouse) they did in fact quickly send me a new pair.

Am I happy the shoes fell apart, of course not. Though since I've mostly worn Skechers for several years now, I knew it wasn't something that happened all the time. And when I had an issue and pointed out a problem, their customer service was quick, polite, helpful, and got the job done. And which keeps the customer, and which gets them some thanks and gratitude from the crockety angry ranty side of my blog.

2 comments:

Myke said...

I had the same experience with Bates boots. When the pair I had blew out in Iraq, I sent photos of the damage. These are combat boots and supposed to stand upnto the rigors of . . . well . . . combat. A new pair was waiting for me with apologies when I got home.

Unknown said...

Got to say, Skechers have proven to be pretty indestrucible for me. I bought my first pair when I worked in a coffee shop, running them ragged, and they lasted for years. I'm pretty hard on my shoes, and their quality has always made me happy.

Thanks for an up post! With so many of the publishing related blogs being doom and gloom lately, even a little nod to good customer service goes a long way.