I needed a new pair of shoes, regular ones. Obviously, I went at one of the two malls in town.
At Polus I went in Deichmann, being the largest one. I bought a pair of brown Puma Retro Sneakers.
After two weeks one of them unglued at one of the sides. After summer holidays, I went back to the store to get them changed, or else.
The lady offered me to glue them back, no other option, even the warranty is 6 months. She said to wait till next week when they will call me.
After two weeks I went back to ask about my shoes, but the answer was I have to wait one more week…
I said I’ll wait two more days before I’ll ask for help at the local consumer protection authority.
But, I thought it will useless to ask for help from them, so, I gave a call at the branch office in Bucharest where a lady said that gluing the shoes in a Deichmann store is not so common. After a few hours I received a call from the local store to get back and “discuss” because the gluing was not a “successful” idea.
I went there (here we go):
- one lady and 15 people in the queue waiting to actually buy products, yes, with money. Hey! Deichmann, they make you profit! Hire at least one more to get the money and sell shoes…
- after like 10-15 minutes I received my brown shoes with black stripes on one side of the right shoe. Stripes from the glue of course.
- I said (furious): this not acceptable, it’s a pair of puma, I paid about 50 euro for them, how do I look heaving one normal brown shoe and one with black tiny stripes??? Jesus Christ…
- the answer was: hmmm let me take a look in the back store, after a wile, I was asked to chose another pair of shoes or money back.
- I went straight to puma shelf looking for size 9 shoes. One pair only. I grabbed it, and went back in line.
- Again, 15 people in the queue, another minimum 15 minutes. Well, having a lot of time I unwrapped the shoes and I noticed the left shoe had the tip for about 1 cm unglued.
- I asked the lady “What if?”, she said: “Than you better get your money back!”, after like 5 minutes of writing I got my money back.
Conclusions:
- Puma shoes can suck sometimes, two pair of shoes with the same issue means bad quality at a high price.
- I got my money back, but, I lost time with trips to the mall, gas and precious nerves.
- The lady from Deichmann in Bucharest is OK, but the store from Polus it’s sucky.
- Where in the World, on what normal shoes store you offer glue services?
- The managers of the store from Cluj-Napoca have no clue about sells or how to treat employees.
- I have my money back but no shoes, one more problem to solve.
- Ah, one more thing: I filled a complaint on the main site of Deichmann but nothing until now. I am (still) waiting for a response. Please google index this page.
Cosmin Marginean | 21-Sep-08 at 9:18 pm | Permalink
In “romanian shop manager thinking” hiring more people just doesn’t make sense, especially in Cluj-Napoca. This would result only in higher costs. Why in the world would he do that? If there are 15 people sitting in a line you don’t have a selling problem, no do you? If the market and the demand are so good, you don’t really need to improve this section, is it? So what if they wait four decades to buy a t-shirt? They do buy it after all don’t they? So it’s not just a management problem here. We are the morons that never say “fuck it, I’m gonna shop somewhere else instead of waiting at this line”. Aaah, right! When in Cluj, somewhere else doesn’t exist …
someone | 02-Oct-08 at 9:16 pm | Permalink
Here’s one thing I don’t get about you people. Why in the world do you have to create an English blog, if you can’t speak english ?? I mean, not fluent enough. Can’t you just create a one in Romanian ? Which, accidentally, of course, happens to be your native language ? Is it so fashionable nowadays to have an English blog ? Just had to say that
Sorry for the possible inconveniences. And I hope you fully understood my post 
)
paul | 03-Oct-08 at 2:44 pm | Permalink
I wrote (mostly) for the people interested to find a quick solution.
I know, my English is not like my Romanian, but the syntax and the linux commands are the same in every language.
I use to “read” Russian and Chinese forums…
As many other Romanians, I continuously improve my language skills. It’s not so easy as it was for you, maybe, but we are giving our best to be competitive.
someone-else | 27-Oct-08 at 12:13 pm | Permalink
@someone – I believe you haven’t read the rest of the posts on this blog. I am 100% sure you will understand that the target audience is not just Romania.
If you believe that using English in a blog is “fashionable” then I am pretty sure you’re not part of the target of this blog. Yes, there are some entries related to Romanian topics, like the one above. However, I believe that for consistency’s sake it would be better to stick to a single language.
This blog is mostly about tech tips and I believe it makes a lot of sense to provide the explanation of your solutions in English. Based on Google search, there were many times when I ran into technical advices written for example in Spanish, Danish or Russian – and it’s frustrating. I believe that if you allocate a lot of energy in searching and documenting these solutions, you should have the common sense and make it available to as many people as possible – not just the ones in your district.
In addition, you should know that the author of this blog CAN speak English. And I believe his level of English is good enough for most of the content here which is 90% tech stuff.
As a conclusion, the term “fashionable” could be applied here if we were talking about the hi5 profile or MySpace page of some brain-dead “manelist” – yeah that’s Romanian, go look it up. This blog is written by a person with a PhD (or at least about to get his PhD AFAIK), so I believe that your comment is completely out of the scope of the content and is merely an instigation to flame war.