In another thread, there have been advertisements on television* for several months advertising shoes being sold on-line (these adverts also feature a delectable presenter, whose name I have yet to establish). It occurred to me one day that maybe this company, www.shoesonline.co.il, might sell the classic croc shoe, so I accessed the site and discovered that indeed they do. They were priced at some ridiculous amount, but the site offered discounts, so the final price was 144 NIS (about $43) which is cheap; there is also free home delivery.
I ordered about three weeks ago; several times I received emails to say that my order has been entered into the system, someone is preparing the shoes, they have been sent, and eventually the most important of all, the shoes have arrived! But they didn't arrive at my house, but rather at a collection point in Bet Shemesh. As I had to be in that area that day (last Thursday), picking up the shoes wasn't a problem.
When I got home and tried on the shoes, I discovered that they were too big (as always with my shoe purchases via the Internet). But unlike other suppliers, they offer free replacements if the size is wrong, also delivered to my home. So on Saturday or Sunday, I accessed the web-site again, found my order and did what was necessary to change the size. After the length of time that it took to fulfill my original order, I didn't have many expectations, so I was very surprised to receive an SMS this morning to say that my new shoes would be delivered (or as I call it, prisoner exchange) today!
This time, the delivery person came to my house, took the original pair of shoes (that I had worn once for five minutes, in order to establish that they were the wrong size) and gave me a new pair ... that fit perfectly.
To conclude: the initial delivery was slow (I assumed that the distributor was in Israel, not in Europe), but the replacement policy and delivery was excellent!
* Following the success (?) of this company's advertising campaign, another company has started showing tv adverts, but I haven't been following these. It's like when one company starts a tv ad campaign for air conditioners: another company will also start. Many many years ago I learnt that one of the reasons for adverts is to tell or remind the public that a product exists; I often think that the real reason why one of these AC companies advertise so much is that their sales are very low, but by continually advertising, their name will enter people's consciousness and they might bolster their sales. Other examples of copycat advertising are banks, insurance companies and investment houses: I doubt that there's much different between any of these company's offerings (in the same field of course), and they're simply trying to show that they are big players in their specific market segment (don't forget that I have an MBA, where one of the compulsory courses is 'marketing').
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