Shoes for £1? Yes please! (garageshoes.co.uk)

Member Name: magenta23

Product:	garageshoes.co.uk
Date:	29/03/09 (109 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Inexpensive, good service

Disadvantages: No shops in the South!

I'm a girl and I like shoes. Increasingly however, I'm a girl who doesn't like shoe shopping not when it's for something sensible anyhow. More and more frequently I turn to the internet when I have something specific in mind, as my last few trips trawling the town for certain items have proved fruitless. I'm the first to complain abount the decline of the high street, but like many I'm a bit of a hypocrit too, watching my pennies, the net simply has the better offers and takes up less of my valueable time.

Searching for some cheap practical flat black boots that did not cost the earth had been a bit of a pain after my favourites gave up and fell to pieces. Simply typing shoes into google lead me to a gem of a site called Garage shoes. I'd not heard of them before, but looking at the store locator they seem to have a lot of retail stores over the country, just none in the South which explains why I hadn't come across them. They stock very reasonably priced shoes and boots for Women and a limited range for men.

As I was looking for a specific style, the way the online store was laid out was perfect. It it easy to use and find the type of thing you are looking for. The shoes are split into categories -
Flats
Heels
Sandals
Wedges
Boots
Men's Collection

You can then narrow down the styles further, for example choosing just to look and low or high heeled shoes. To be honest, this is good but not completely necessary as there aren't a huge amount of styles to trawl through. I've been back to the site a few times and although there are a few core styles that seem to always be stocked, the turnover of stock seems quite high as there is always new styles. Of course that means others sell out and don't get replenished so if you see something you like, buy it!

On my first visit to the website, Garage Shoes had a 'Buy one get one for £1' multibuy on. Yep, buy one pair of shoes or boots and get the cheaper pair for just £1. I was sold! Boots I'd been looking at elsewhere were similar prices without this added incentive. I bought a pair of flat black biker style boots for £25 and got another higher heeled pair for £1. I've since been back to see if the prices of the boots I purchased had changed now the promotion had ended, but they remained the same.

Delivery is reasonable too, £4.95 for express (2-3 working days) and £2.95 for standard (5-7 working days). I opted for the cheaper of the two. I received a confirmation email for my order immediately and a dispatch one three days later. My boots arrived the day after that. I was very impressed.

The boots fit like a glove and I live in them. True, they are synthetic, wouldn't get real leather for those prices. However, I have to say they look more expensive than they are and I'm happy with the value for money they provide. I've spent three times more on Clarks flats that aren't as comfy as these. The only critisim is one of them squeaks!!

If I wasn't as happy with my boots as I am, they do offer a returns service. I cannot comment on this as thankfully, I've not had to use it. However looking at the website. The return is at the customer's expense but they offer a gift voucher to compensate for this.

Overall a very good company I will be returning to.

Summary: A great store