After four attempts of getting a pair of boots to fit using mail order I achieved success. Four bloody times and a small fortune in parcel costs and an argument with a post master.

next time I'll save myself the bother and shoot myself.

I've had excellent luck and fantastic deals ordering boots online. I have 40 years experience at fitting my own boots, so know well my size and needs, and never had to return anything. They fit perfectly always, and such low prices! I am now awaiting another pair of boots, even with a return they beat REI and all, maybe less popular colors but I wouldn't be so concerned with what people think given that locally, they may pay $200 for shoddy made lightweights.

I shop by brand, and do not gamble with boots that I don't know. My total expense for the last few years has been about $175 for maybe five pairs of boots, they all held up well, and give me hundreds of miles of use. I cannot recommend anything else so enthusiastically.

What site do you buy your boots from where you can spend so little on so many pairs of boots 1000Pks?

Hotoven wrote:What site do you buy your boots from where you can spend so little on so many pairs of boots 1000Pks?

I'd tell you that I have a link on my website, but since I'm in a good mood and it would be pretty obvious to most, it's the Net giant, Amazon. btw I get free shipping, too. The boots I am wearing now I got for 19.99, and they are comfortable enough for long miles, a bit lean on the padding, though. These aren't low grade cheap tennys or similar, they are full medium weight backpacking boots, name brand.

You do have to shop, and I now spend a few hours a week looking for deals, and have I saved big money! Search engines and ranking schemes make it easy to find the lowest prices. But there are scams and cheats out there, you have to be knowledgable or you'll lose all of your money on junk if nothing at all. Enough about shopping tips, there are rich idiots who enjoy being parted stupidly with their cash, so I'll leave it at that.

Why don't you go to a shop that knows how to fit boots? Then you can just buy the boots. That should help you save on shipping.

Denjem wrote:Why don't you go to a shop that knows how to fit boots? Then you can just buy the boots. That should help you save on shipping.

I have visited very few shops that know how to fit boots. Outside of backcountry hub cities such shops likely don't even exist.

Visit a shop, try if they fit, go back home and order online

sjarelkwint wrote:Visit a shop, try if they fit, go back home and order online

+1, just don't let the person at the store know your using them!

So when you go to get fit again the shop won't be there and you are back in the same situation you were in last time! Sounds like a plan. Then don't bitch about your fking boots not fitting on the internet. You people wonder why there aren't any small shops around that know how to fit boots. It is because you dumb asses put them out of business by using them, not supporting them.

Hotoven wrote:

sjarelkwint wrote:Visit a shop, try if they fit, go back home and order online

+1, just don't let the person at the store know your using them!

I've done this plenty. I happily let the store know that their prices are terrible and they can easily be found sometimes for even up to half off to anyone who shops online...

General store employees usually don't care and don't set the prices, so why would they care? Well... unless they work on commission, but meh...

You are not getting the point. If you get fit or check out how something fits and then go buy online, you will put the store out of business. You can find anything cheaper on the internet. But when the day comes and you go to check something out and the store is out of business and now you have to order online. But you really don't know what size you are and you are between a medium or a large, but you don't want to order both, but you are not sure, and you don't want to pay return shipping, but you can't go and try it on because you didn't support your local shop. So you write a thread on Summitpost bitching about your experiance with getting fit for something and how much of a pain in the ass it was sending things back and forth, cursing the postmaster, and how much it cost in shipping to get the right thing. You could have just supported your local economy and bought it there.
In the words of Stone Brewing's Arrogant Basterd- It's not too expensive, you're too cheap.

Denjem wrote:In the words of Stone Brewing's Arrogant Basterd- It's not too expensive, you're too cheap.

Worst quote ever...And feel free to support your local store. I will continue to buy online.

What makes it so bad? The fact that is the truth. You can bag on the shops all you want, you start baggin on my beer and I will hunt you down.

denjem has a point. The shops do have the boots for you to try on and they usually have some knowledge about how to fit the boots. If they don't then YOU should tell them to step up their game, after all they are YOUR local shop! Give them the chance to make you satisfied. Afterall, if you knew what you were doing then you wouldn't have had to make multiple returns on this. As far as pricing, there is no way that a shop could compete with an online retialer, thats just a given. Its unfortunate these days because the more the economy tanks, the more people shop for deals online(which is totally understandable), the more local businesses go out of business due to low traffic, the more it affects your local economy. Just saying, thats how it works. So have fun online but don't bitch when you can't look at gear because you would use a shop as a tangable catalogue.