NEVER SHOP AT "THE SOCCER POST" IN MORRISTOWN, NJ

I have never before inmy life been the subject of such a terrible shopping experience. I was under the belief that the customer is always right, particularly when there is no doubt that the employee or boss as the case may be, was obviously at fault. Let me explain to you what happened...

I needed a pair of soccer shoes with which to play as i had joined a group who play on turf (astroturf) fields. The texture of the turf is similar to grass except that it is made of recycled car tyres. The surface is softish but the ground beneath the turf is hard. Cleats can be worn on this type of surface, but shoe manufacturers, keeping up with the high incedence of turf fields due to maintenance and weather conditions, have developed shoes specifically intended to use on turf. The actual shoe part of the shoe is the same as soccer cleats, the difference lies in the sole. Usually they are made of rubber and have moulded-rubber spikes and blades that are about a quarter of an inch long that give traction on a turf field without being to long and hard as to either rip up the field or to not penetrate the ground properly which results in the players hurting their feet because the cleats are pressed up into the shoe rather than down into the ground thus causing the players feet to absorb the pressure.

So anyway, since my wife's family lives in Morristown in NJ and we take the train there from Penn station, NY when we are going to visit them and the shop is opoosite the station i figured it would be a good place to purchase some shoes.
They have the largest collection of shoes and equipment of all the soccer shops i have visited in New Jersey and New York.

I was assisted by the owner of the store, a middle-aged Italian man who had the air of a greasy salesman and i did not particularly care for him.
He proceeded to measure my foot and gave a reading of US size 10.5. He then went into the back of the shop to collect all the turf shoes he had in that size. I tried a few, and i found a pair that i liked the look of. When i tried them on, I remarked to him that they felt a little small. He assured me and felt my toes through the shoe and told me that shoes are meant to be tight for soccer to allow for a better feel for the ball. Not being very experienced in buying soccer shoes, i took his advice despite repeatedly questioing him about the size. He informed me as well that the shoes will stretch with time. This is not the case as the shoes are made of synthetic fabrics and so will not stretch like leather would.
So i paid the man and left the shop, eager to hit the field and play some football.

After 2 or 3 occasions of wearing the shoes i began to get some pain in my left large toe, but attributed this to exercising after a long hiatus or being stood on or something else of a passing nature. I became slightly more concerned when my other large toe on my right foot began to exhibit the same symptoms. I was now suspicious of the shoes because whatever happened to my left toe had obviously happened to my right with the exception that my right toe toenail had turned black.
After a little bit of internet research it was clear that this kind of injury is caused by shoes being either too small or too big and having your foot sliding around inside the shoe and impacting against the toe cap. This is particularly true with soccer because you may be running full speed in one direction only to have to stop on the dime, pivot and run the other way. My shoes were obvisouly not too large and so i suspected it was the shoes that were doing this to me as they were the only thing my feet had in common that could cause this injury. Unless by incredible coincedince both feet had been stepped on in the same place.

After my 5th wearing of the shoes, i could barely walk and was unable to flex my large toes adequately causing an altered gait and in turn causing the stressing of my achilles tendon. This is all down to the shopkeeper convincing me to buy the 10.5 shoes because he didnt have a bigger size and he didnt want to lose the possible sale of reasonably expensive shoes. He would rather get his money and hope I dont come back than create a satisfied consumer base of returning customers.

After purchasing new shoes from Doss-soccer.com's outlet store called "The home of Soccer" on 1st avenue between 90th and 91st streets (I highly reccomend them for service and products availability, i will shop here from now on) I was able to see and feel that my problem was definitly that the turf shoes i owned were too small.
The new shoes are an 11 but made of kangaroo leather which stretches quickly and to the shape of your foot. What is interesting is that when i was buying them, the friendly store manager measured my foot and gave a reading of 11 - 11.5.

Armed with this new information, my wife and i returned to "The Soccer Post" in Morristown and explained to the shop owner that due to his bad salesmanship by falsely assuring me that the shoes were fine in order to make money and not lose a sale, i now had badly injured feet and have to sit out of practice for two weeks while my feet recovered. We were asking of him to acknowledge his mistake and correct it. Bear in mind, my father-in-law used to be a senior manager at Foot Locker and Sachs Fifth Avenue. He knows shoes and he knows service, so we knew what we were and were'nt able to ask of this shopkeeper and we all felt that we were within our rights to demand an exchange for a larger size.

This outraged the store manager and he shouted at and belittled us in front of other customers. He asked me to try the shoes on and declared that they fit correctly. He then measured my foot and said you are an 11.5, just like the shoe. then we showed him the shoe and the little label that reads 10.5 and he accused us of picking the wrong shoes off the shelf. The shoe shelves only have one display shoe per pair. The shoes i bought and their box came from the store room which he retrieved. I wanted to buy a pair of adidas Samba but he didnt have my size and so he himself brought out the Nike 10.5 that i bought and suggested, encouraged and sold them to me.

So he had admitted that the shoes were too small but he still would not acknowledge that it was his fault. We kept arguing with him, not because we were argumentative but because he was so rude. He then told us that we should leave the shoes with him and he would send them to Nike and claim they were defective. I informed him that there is nothing defective about shoes that are only the wrong size and he said that he will cut them or make a hole in them and then send them back. We then informed him that there is no reason why he should be dishonest with Nike in order to cover for his own mistake. He then argued on and on, saying ridiculous things like "they are your feet, so its your fault" whatever that could mean.

Eventually he offered us a 50% refund, but on my father-in-law's advice we refused as this was not good enough for us, because we knew we would have to take his refund, and pay the other 50% out of our pocket to get the new shoes. He would then vandalise the old ones and claim a refund from Nike so he would then make a full refund for the cost of the shoes, lose 50% in a refund to me, but make another 50% back in the extra i would have to pay to get the larger size, thereby he would not lose any money and i would be out 50% of the cost of the shoes due to his error.

This was unacceptable and my wife telephoned her father to ask for advice, and he told us to let the shop owner know that there is a consumer protection agency in Morristown that these incidents can (and will) be reported to.
We then had to wait for 10 mminutes while the shopkeeper proceeded to ignore us until we went and confronted him and told him we are going to report him to the comitee for consumer protection and that we knew shoe sales due to my father-in-law who would later tell us that anyone who acted in this way in one of his stores would have been fired on the spot. He should have happily echanged the shoes and apologised, not faught hammer and nails until we were insulted and belittled.

When he realised that we meant business and also that we now knew his trick (vandalise the shoes and send for a refund) he very reluctantly refunded my money in total. As he was doing this his shop assistant came out and attempted to defend him by saying that he shouldnt refund us because they have an exchange only policy. He spat these words at us venomously, to which my wife retorted cleverly, "Thats fine, we only ever wanted an echange" which shut him up and made him walk away rather red faced.

So we received our refund, which i must mention was literally thrown at us.

It is unclear to me why this man would fight so hard with the customer. I am a returning customer who plays a lot of soccer and need a lot of supplies. I would have recommended all my team mates to his shop, but now i will reccomend "The Home of Soccer" on first avenue for their outstanding service.
He will now lose a fair amount of business andhe will risk his integrity as a shop owner infront of the "better business bereau".

We were not rude to him in anyway. We merely requested an exchange and he thought that he could pull the wool over our eyes, perhaps because we are young. Due to our stubborness (my wife's actually) we were able to get what was rightfully ours. He had admitted early on in the affair that he had made a mistake through ihs measurement and willingness to refund 50%. Because we stayed we called his bluff and this made him mad.

Is it not increibly rude to treat customers in such a way? particularly ones like me who would happily spend hundreds of dollars there every year.

I was insulted and still cannot understand why he would not just exchnage the shoes because he then still maintains the profit he made on selling them instead of refunding my money, besides he is going to vandalise them and send them back anyway.

So please, oh please dont give this man any business. As consumers we must oust bad shops by not shopping there. Go to Doss-soccer.com and shop with them.

My other posts will not be rants about shopping but hopefully more soccer orientated.
thanks for reading my rant.