Remember what I said about à la mode meaning “in fashion” in French? I promised I’d share. OK, I admit that it’s highly unlikely that this woman is French. I had to take the picture anyway.
Yes, one boot is black and white and one is green and white.
I know, I know, I sound catty. But it’s all in good fun. Actually, I think I’m beginning to get an idea why they dress like this…
I’ve been shopping for a pair of black boots for months. I have really skinny calves, so it’s hard to find any in which I don’t look like a 10-year-old wearing mommy’s shoes. Plus, most of the boots I’ve seen in Paris look like something only a hooker would wear…
A couple of weeks ago, I found a pair. No tassles, buckles, zippers, fur, laces, metal dangly things, random spots of color. It’s quite common to find boots sporting several of the aforementioned decorative touches… These had a low heel, a simple strip of leather up the outside. Classy. I pushed my jeans up to the knee and tried them on and they looked good. They were a half size too big (they didn’t have my size and neither did the other location of that chain a couple of blocks away) but I’m not averse to comfort in shoes, so I didn’t mind.
A few days later, I put them on with a skirt and thought they were too loose in the calf after all (Vincent did too). It hadn’t been obvious in jeans. So I decided to take them back. I hadn’t worn them, I had the receipt, the box, the bag. I paid with a credit card. No problem, right?
Wrong. The snotty women in the shoe shop informed me that they don’t do refunds. Ever. Only exchanges. Unfortunately, there was nothing in the store to exchange them for but the same hooker boots I’d seen there in the first place. And they don’t even issue store credit so you can come back in a couple of months and maybe find sandals that don’t look like something you’d wear for your boyfriend’s Greek goddess fantasy…
I asked them if it was common for stores not to do refunds and they said a lot of stores didn’t. Blew me away. It remains to be seen if they were telling the truth… One thing I did know before I moved here is that the “customer is always right” concept does not exist in the French mind. I’d forgotten that, though.
So I went to the second location to see if they had my size by some miracle, even though they hadn’t the day I bought these. No. Then I asked the lady there to call another store and they did have my size. So I went and tried them on. They are marginally better. And I’ll have to live with that.
Live and learn. It’s not a total loss; I can wear them under jeans and long skirts. But still. Jesus.
So that was the single most infuriating shopping experience of my life so far. Anyway, now I’ll never know if the poor girl in the picture ever had second thoughts about her boots, or if she was just stuck with ‘em and decided to roll with it…
That is very very typical of small shops in Paris. I learned that lesson the hard way and now I know, only buy from a boutique if you are absolutely 100% certain that you won’t change your mind. I end up doing most of my shopping at Le Bon Marché for the simple reason that they have a no questions refund policy. Since I don’t have lots of time to spend in the shops, I buy everything, try it on at home and return what I don’t want to keep. The other grands magasins technically have the same policy but since their personnel are mainly incompetent, it isn’t always that easy. I once had a return refused at Printemps unless I took the Dry Clean Only shirt home and ironed it (against the rules on the tag)- after the sales girl had chucked it in the bottom of a plastic sack with no tissue paper. I had to write a letter to the head office of Printemps to get my refund. Insane.
Wow! I got these boots at Minelli. I just assumed that a chain like that would have the refund thing down. Thanks for the tip about the grands magasins. You don’t wear a 38 shoe by any chance, do you? ;-)
[...] I got the pas possible when I tried to return the boots I hadn’t worn. When I tried to return the pillowcases, unopened, with the receipt, after the 30-day limit. Two different times when I wanted to buy something fragile and have it shipped to the States because I was afraid it wouldn’t survive in my luggage… “Pas possible ! That would mean I’d have to go to the post office.” One of them really said that. [...]