I was really disappointed with my experience at Delmar Bootery. My husband has had them do work on shoes before and was very pleased with the work they did and they have some pretty good reviews here too. I'm also a big supporter of small businesses and was very pleased initially to find them. However, I was very disappointed with the quality of the work - and to be honest I'm not a particularly picky person either. I brought in 4 pairs of sandals and a purse to be repaired. 2 pairs of the sandals had a small tear on the insole on one of the sandals. They said they could fix them. Another had a strap that had torn and the last pair of shoes had the bottom of the heel that needed replacing. The shoes that needed the heel fixed were dirty and I asked her if they could get the shoes clean - because if they couldn't I told the young woman that I didn't want to spend money on fixing the heal. She said they could. The purse was missing a tack and I had the tack for them to size it. Another woman told me that they would have no problem matching it.
My husband and I picked up the items and we're really surprised at the poor quality of the work done. Fortunately, I checked them before I left the store because they gave me the items and went to help someone else. The sandals that needed the strap repaired were fine so no complaints for those but the rest was not. The shoes that needed the heel repaired and to be cleaned were dirty but the heel was replaced. I do completely understand them not getting the shoes cleaned - heck, they didn't get them dirty! But they should have called me to see if I still wanted the heels repaired - that was what I told her when I dropped them off. The purse came back with a completely different tack - the others are rounded this one is bigger and flat. Most people probably won't notice it - so it isn't as big a deal - but I would have appreciated a call first. I didn't even bring it up to them because my bigger concern were the other 2 sandals. The 2 shoes that they were resoling were the worst. They were not the same size as the shoe, it was peeling up all around the sides of the shoe and you could see the foam all the way around the shoe. One pair is black and the other is brown so it was very obvious. They looked horrible! I pulled them out of the bag and pointed it out to the woman and she didn't really say anything. The woman next to her started to explain how difficult it was to resole my sandals. She told me she worked very hard on them and that was the best she could do. I'm a big believer in communicating if there are problems - I can deal with anything if we talk about it. But to just send them out looking like they did disappointed me. And I was particularly upset because even though they each had a small tear when I brought them in - you couldn't see them, my feet were on them and they were wearable. But looking like they did they weren't wearable at all. I was not mean at all I just said these don't look very good and asked what we could do. Eventually another woman came over, looked at them and said that she was not happy with the work that was done on them at all and they would take them back and redo them and they would call me when they were done. My husband who has had them repair shoes before was very surprised at how bad they looked.
They were redone a few weeks later and I will say they look better (the insole is the same size as the sandal), but they still don't look very good. You could see the foam all the way around the shoes and it's still peeling up around the shoe. I pointed it out to the woman working and she said nobody will ever see it but that she could touch up color on the foam so it isn't as noticeable which I asked her to and she did. It's better but I'm not that happy with the way they look. She was very nice and said if I didn't like them I could bring them back and she would redo them herself so I appreciated that. But honestly I won't go back because I just think the quality of the work I had done there just isn't very good. As much as I hate to give a bad review I definitely wouldn't have them do any major shoe work done there - insole replacements etc. I just didn't see quality work or the communication when there were issues to help resolve them. read more