New boots...

As at long last, we actually have a building on site, I had to rush out and buy a pair of safety boots, because a) our contractor won’t let you on site without them, and b) it bloody well hurts when you tread on a rusty nail, or drop a brick on your foot!

Also, these boots are incredibly comfortable, and I use them when walking JRT and Mrs S – in no particular order, in the woods, or anywhere for that matter, including Twickenham.

Just recently, I noticed that the top half of one boot seemed to be having a severe argument with the bottom half, and was going through a form of separation; i.e. had split. Now I’m not normally very litigious, but somehow, after totting up the hours they’d been used, it only worked out at about a couple of months wear, over a period of time, so perhaps something was wrong.

So, off to ‘Bucket, Phewthat’llcostafortune and Sagtrouser’, Builders Merchants to the Gentry, to issue a mild complaint. Sure enough, their response was ‘Phew, they won’t take those back, they even charge postage if they’ve been misused’! Naturally, I said, ‘Hmmmph, well you’d expect them to last a lot longer if they’d been soaked in pug and oil for six months’, but Mr Elias Bucket was unswerving to the point of obstruction, and I was going to lose this one (especially as the shop was filling up with subbies buying hammers and bricks and stuff, all towering over me and smelling of Drum roll-ups).

I was bereft of boots. Shoeless in Kent. Unshod. Without sole...

Now, on the website for the manufacturer, there was a contact email address, and I’d popped one off to them just before all this unpleasantness, in the nicest possible terms, as funnily enough, when I’d bought them, I’d registered with them and got a free wallet, but that’s another story.

Sure enough, the next day, there was a reply from the manufacturers apologising for the delay and asking for photographic evidence of said problem, and receipts etc. blah blah blah. So out came the Nikon, and the above pic was whisked off. (Left boot, Leather, Scroblene for the wearing of...).

Within hours, there was another email apologising for the problem, immediately agreeing there was a manufacturing fault, and that a replacement pair would be sent immediately. They arrived on the Thursday by TNT, and I’d only started all this on the Monday!

So for bloody good service, excellent PR and superb commercial awareness, buy your kit from Scruffs http://www.scruffs.com/ but don’t check the recent item in ‘The Sun’, if you’re anyway squeamish…;0)

I said DON’T Google the item in 'The Sun'!

Well I warned you…