Not happy

A few weeks ago, I bought a pair of Tony Bianco Palais shoes in red suede on sale in a small country town for $75. I was quite impressed with the style, and went looking on line to see what other colours they came in. I found that they also came in a nice purple suede that I was really keen on, and a dark chocolate brown kid leather that would work well with some of my Autumn (redheaded colouring) outfits.

After some googling, I discovered that Wanted Shoes (the Australian one, which I think is unrelated to the USA one) had the brown on sale for $80, so I went to their Kotara store on Saturday to ask about them. The shop assistant said that they could order them in for me to look at to see if I liked the colour, and I wouldn't need to leave a deposit. The implication seemed to be that if I didn't like the colour, I wouldn't be obliged to buy them.

I went back to the store on Thursday afternoon to have a look at the shoes. The sales assistant clearly had the attitude that, since I had ordered them, I was there to buy the shoes, not look at them. In fact, the sales assistant lifted the lid off the box only long enough to be able to confirm that they were the right style and colour. She also advised that the price had been further reduced from $80 to $50 but did not indicate why.

When I got home, I took the shoes out of the box and was shocked to discover that the shoes are quite obviously badly shop soiled, having numerous scratches and scuffs, particularly on the right shoe that had obviously been on display and still had a large price label stuck inside.

I am appalled at the behaviour of the sales staff. While the shoes were discounted, at no time was it suggested that the shoes were marked or damaged in any way. As I had purchased the same shoes in red suede for $75 elsewhere a few weeks earlier, I assumed that it was simply a clearance on a slow moving colour.

While my wife is fairly confident that the marks can be polished out using a rejuvenating shoe polish, I am extremely disappointed with the experience of purchasing shoes from Wanted Shoes.

I've sent a message to the customer service link on their web site, and so far I've had an automated response containing what I sent them. I'll be interested to see what their response is.

From boy to belly dancer

I surprised myself today. I wondered how long ago I'd mentioned in my blog that I have been learning belly dancing. The surprise was that I don't appear to have ever mentioned it before!

I started learning belly dancing about 8 years ago, and generally done one class per week, roughly in school terms, when I've been able to. There have been a couple of long gaps where I haven't danced. I think that the first one, about 6 years ago, was about 9 months. The recent one was that I stopped in about June last year and only started again a few weeks ago.

This week, I did something that I've never done before. I took a day off work, dressed in a casual outfit, spent a few hours out shopping then did something that I hadn't seriously considered even a few days earlier. I did a belly dance class en femme. I absolutely loved it. The only negative was that, instead of doing some yoga at the end of the class, we just did the full hour of dance because makeup and a wig aren't very compatible with yoga.

The problem now is that, I'd love to do my dance classes en femme all the time, but that would probably mean no more yoga. I even considered taking a wig stand and makeup so that I could take the wig off before the yoga, then touch up the makeup and put the wig back on at the end but that's a lot of fiddling!