journal features

shoe incident resolved

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Tokyo, 2009.10.09

After a few phone calls, the shoe incident is resolved. In short, I'm keeping everything.

The vendor—bigshoes.com—charges for delivery to Japan and that I stupidly had the shoes shipped directly and incurred substantial duty upon delivery. Going through the detailed instructions on the process for reclaiming the tax, I'm not even sure I understand the process, and know that I wouldn't be able to communicate the issue to the staff at the post office. So returning anything would be difficult and accomplished at a considerable loss.

The boots don't fit, but they're not as bad as I'd first thought. In fact, I think a part of the problem is that I was lacing them the way I do shoes, and not tightly enough. I'm going to get a couple of pairs of thick hiking socks and some hell inserts.

As for the shoes, they managed to dig up the matches for the two that they sent me. And by "managed to dig up" I mean there's every possibility that they saw the chance to up-sell and simply sent me one of each guessing that I wasn't going to return them. I'm moderately happy with the shoes, and I'm happy with the ~50% discount I'm getting on the "matches".

Overall, this experience has dissuaded me from dealing with bigshoes.com again. When discussing the boots, the rep said that most customers wind up ordering boots that are 1-2 sizes smaller than normal. Where was this information when I was buying? As for the shoes, I'm not impressed, but I need shoes and I can't buy them in this country.

This episode has also confirmed a lot of the attitudes that have shaped the little business that we're launching. We can't dick around with our clients. No withheld information, no shipping charges, and no impediments to exchange!!

rand()m quote

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (1995)