Alden: Great shoes, atrocious customer service

For my money Alden is the finest shoe made in America, and among the finest non-bespoke shoes in the world. Unfortunately their customer service does not measure up to their product. So, after decades of buying literally dozens of pairs of Aldens I'm now an ex-customer.

Alden has a program to recondition their products for their customers. I had a pair of their chocolate brown suede short wings that were my favorite shoes, and so they got a lot of wear. I decided to send them to the factory for reconditioning, which I did several months ago.

A couple of weeks later I received a post card from Alden notifying me that they had received the shoes and that it would take several weeks to complete the work. So far, so good.

So a few weeks passed by and I was about to leave the country for a couple of weeks. I called Alden to let them know and asked them not to ship the shoes to me until I returned, in the event that they were finished while I was gone. The customer service rep said...after a long pause....those shoes were delivered to you last Wednesday. What? Yeah. To what address? Well, they had mid-addressed the box. It went somewhere else. All the cs rep could say was, "well, I'm sure they'll turn up.." Unacceptable! Alden did not notify me that the shoes had been shipped....they didn't even have tracking information!

My retailer gave me the name of someone to speak to. He was very little help. He offered a pair of shoes of my choice, but the model they lost is no longer in their catalog. Well, the last used for my shoes is still being used (according to their own catalog) and the same brown suede material is still being used as well. SO JUST MAKE A NEW PAIR! You have the lasts and the material and the craftsmen, so make up a new pair. "No." Well, there's a pair on eBay, so even though I don't fancy wearing somebody's old shoes, just buy those, refurbish them and we'll call it even. "No, we won't do that." Well WTF? I've bought thousands of dollars of your shoes over the years, I've given you two ways to satisfy me after your ****-up and you won't do either one? "That's right."

Well, sorry Alden. You obviously don't want or need my business, so the least I can do in return is tell everybody I can how little customer loyalty means to Alden Shoe. Payless probably would have treated me better.

 

I've had several pair of AE, they're good but they just don't match up to Alden. I'd recommend you try a pair of Aldens, but honestly I don't want to give them any business.

 

The neighbor, whose address was on the box and whom I know very well, claims he never received them. I have no reason to doubt him. I called UPS to ask for assistance and was told that only the shipper could initiate research, plus I was never given a tracking number.

As for the new pair.....well I burned that bridge down pretty comprehensively! They wanted to take the lazy way out and just ship a pair off the shelf. They could have bench made a new pair if they wanted to. As I said, they have the last (it's one of their most common), they must have the material (they're making other models from it), and they certainly have the craftsmen. They just didn't want to make the effort.