My shoe saga

My lifelong quest for comfortable sandals with a bit of height (I want longer legs!) led me to Grasshoppers Sandollars, which turned out okay. I wanted something even more comfortable, though, so I kept looking. Somehow I found Skechers Energy Interscope sandals. I've had really good luck with Skechers in the past, so I was ready to order them immediately. This was quite a leap from two months ago, when I was hesitant to order shoes online at all! My great experience with endless.com did a lot to make me comfortable with this.

Comparing Prices

Unfortunately, it appears the Interscope sandals are either amazingly popular or came out long enough ago that they're not widely available anymore. I would have liked to have bought these sandals from endless.com, since my last shopping experience there was so good, but they didn't stock them. Neither did the Skechers company itself. They were available on several sites, but they seemed expensive:
shoebuy.com: $40.95
shoes.com: $44.99
zappos.com: $46.00
I mean, I usually shop at thrift stores, although I finally gave up on finding good used shoes, on the theory that women won't give away comfortable shoes. Clothes, maybe; shoes, never. So I'm used to seeing shoes for less than $10! Plus, it turned out that these sites either didn't have my size, or only stocked the white shoe (I wanted the black one). Finally I did a Froogle search and saw that a website called "Shoes on a Shoestring" had the black sandals in size 8 for $27.29, plus $7.95 shipping. The $35.24 price, although still expensive, was the best I'd found -- but I had never heard of this website. Naturally, I checked epinions, but it wasn't listed here. I was feeling lucky, so I decided to be the guinea pig.

The Store

Okay, I wasn't quite as reckless I made it sound. I did a thorough web search to make sure I couldn't find anyone writing about bad experiences ordering from this company. During this search I found a lot of reviews of the actual store Shoes on a Shoestring, which is located in New Mexico. A lot of people enjoyed shopping there, and thought it had good prices and selection. So then I did a whois.net search to try and verify that the website and the physical store were the same entity (you never know!). It turned out that the website was registered with information that corresponded to the store.

Shopping

The site is okay, but has nowhere near the sorting and viewing features of endless.com (I really love that site). It actually doesn't even have a "sort by price" feature, which is always the first thing I use. At Shoes on a Shoestring, you can sort results by brand, size, width and color, as well as by category. (Categories include fashion boots, comfort boots, fashion sandals, etc.)

I already knew what I wanted, so I didn't need to use the search features, but I did check them out before writing this review and found the results rather difficult to sort and navigate. You can find what you want eventually, but be prepared to go through a few different searches, and look through 18 pages of results. This might be nice if you're just browsing, but I didn't really like it.

I was able to get a low price on my shoes as part of this site's "yellow tag clearance." As the site explains,

"At the first of every month we begin a “markdown” process on selected items called Yellow tag clearance . This procedure starts a discounting process that will lower the price of this item at the first of every month until the item is gone. This means if you want to “wait it out” the price continually drops. However, the risk is whether the item will still be there when the scheduled price drop takes place. Our local brick & mortar customers LOVE this game & we hope you will too."

I didn't know this was going on until after I placed my order, but it worked to my advantage, since I got a good price.

The shoe selection appears very good, although within each shoe model there was quite a lot of variation in which sizes were available (sometimes there'd only be the size 5 left). This reminded me of shopping in the clearance racks, which is where I usually go first!

As far as viewing shoes, this site just has the basic smallish picture, with none of the zoom and rotate features available on sites like endless and zappos.

Ordering and more

The ordering process is straightforward, and the website is secure. You can choose standard shipping, which is $7.95 no matter how many pairs of shoes you order. With this option, your shoes will arrive within 3 to 7 business days. If you're in a hurry you can pay up: $25 for 2-3 day shipping, $45 for overnight. Of course I chose the lowest price option.

Like many online shoe stores, Shoes on a Shoestring also has a 110% price match, within 10 days of the purchase.

The return policies for this store are much more restrictive than other shoe sites: you may return unused shoes if they are incorrect or defective, and receive a credit for the product price. Assuming it costs you the same price to ship the shoes, you'll be out shipping both ways, or $15.90. Ouch! In retrospect, I'm surprised I was confident enough about my order to go through with it!

Shipping

I ordered my shoes at 10 PM on 7/13/08, and by 11 AM the next day I received an e-mail informing me they'd been shipped via USPS Ground, and providing a tracking number.

The Shoes on a Shoestring site has a warning in the shipping section: "When you place your order, it will be delivered to the “SHIP TO:” address that you specify during check out. It is your responsibility to be available to receive the package when it is delivered. If you are not present at the time of delivery, it will be left at your doorstep."

I figured this would be no problem: my husband would be home during the day that whole week, so he'd be there to get the package. I tracked the shoes through the USPS website and was excited when I saw that they'd been processed in Portland on July 16. However, there was no package that day, or the next, or the next . . . Finally on July 21 I e-mailed the post office, and got the response that they didn't have any more information, since the shipping option that was used might provide delivery confirmation, but wasn't required to. I had to wait 14 days before filing a missing package report, which I did, but still didn't hear anything.

Now, all during this period my husband and I were home a lot during the day, since we have weird schedules sometimes. No shoes arrived. I was getting bummed out and figured that the frugality gods had lost my sandals as punishment for buying two new pairs of shoes in the same summer. I thought the package must have been left, and somehow someone stole it. After filing the package report the post office was supposed to call me, but they didn't, so I kept up my e-mail correspondence trying to get some information.

Finally, one day (I think it was Aug. 10), the mailman rang the doorbell. I ran downstairs, and he had a small package that he handed me (earbuds I'd ordered from Amazon). Strangely, when I later retrieved the mail there was an "attempted delivery" slip, saying that USPS had tried to deliver a package that day. What? I was home all day and answered the door -- nobody could possibly have failed to deliver a package! Well, it turned out that that package was my shoes, and they had supposedly tried to deliver it three times. I don't think that's possible (and there had not been any other attempted delivery slips), but whatever. I went to the post office and picked up my shoes.

All of this hassle was mostly due to the USPS, but it was made slightly worse by the erroneous information from Shoes on a Shoestring. I e-mailed them just now to let them know that they should change that section of their website to avoid confusion.

Customer Service

As explained above in "Shipping," my trouble getting my shoes was actually mostly the fault of the post office. Nevertheless, I contacted Shoes on a Shoestring's customer service twice and received prompt replies. In addition to the customer service e-mail address and phone number, there's also a customer chat feature on the website that you can use between 8 am and 5 pm MST during the work week. I never tried this last one, but it could be handy.

I don't know if I'd say the customer service was great, since I would have been more concerned that a customer didn't receive a package. On 7/21 I e-mailed customer service expressing my concern that I hadn't received the package I ordered on 7/10. This is the response I got, in its entirety: "It looks like your package has not been delivered. Unfortunately we do not have any control over the delivery details. Regular ground shipping usually takes between 5-7 business days." All of that is factually true, and not rude or anything, but it certainly didn't make me feel like a valued customer.

Recommendations

I'd consider shopping here again, if the price was right, but I'd be more hesitant than I was the first time. You'll want to be very confident that you'll love the shoes you're ordering, since returning them means you'll be throwing away about $16 in shipping costs. Comparing Shoes on a Shoestring with Endless.com shows a clear winner: In terms of shopping, Endless has better searching, sorting and viewing tools. And in terms of ordering, Endless has better shipping cost and speed (free overnight!) as well as a better return policy. Basically, Endless wins out everywhere . . . except they didn't have the shoes I wanted, and Shoes on a Shoestring had a good price. I got lucky and received my shoes, and didn't need to return them, but in retrospect I took an imprudent risk.