the story of my beautiful Naot shoes

Last August I bought a wonderful pair of Naots, which are the most comfortable shoes I've ever owned and I think the most expensive shoes I've ever bought. This isn't saying much for many people, but I'm not an expensive shoe person so it's saying a lot for me. You can read about the purchase here.

The saleslady told me she'd owned her pair of Naots for something like 11 years, so I counted on a long relationship with these beauties. I wore them all winter with socks and tights and they continued to feel like bedroom slippers.

Until the leather on the inside of one of the heels wore through and the shoe literally rubbed me the wrong way.

I didn't really notice this until I could lose the socks when the weather warmed up. And then I realized it quickly when a big blister formed on my heel.

I did a quick fix by affixing an industrial-sized band-aid on the inside of the heel. But I didn't feel like that was a long-term fix for the queen bee of my shoe wardrobe.

I decided to contact Naot to see how they suggested I fix the shoe. I googled NAOT and got the website for the American distributor (Naot is an Israeli company). I sent an email and heard nothing. So I called the helpline number and spoke to a woman who told me I could take the shoes back to the store where I bought them. I explained that wasn't realistic since the store was outside of Boston and I was in South Carolina. She was fresh out of suggestions after that.

So then I sent an email to the Israeli Naot office. I've heard nothing from that attempt.

I decided I'd just have to live with the band-aid solution.

Until this weekend when I saw an ad in the Charleston paper that said the Naot factory representative would be at the Folly Road location of Phillips Shoes on Saturday.

When I read this, I was sitting at the pool and knew I wasn't going to make it to Folly Road before the rep left, so I decided to call. The rep was at lunch, but I spoke to the store manager who assured me the rep would call me when she was back from lunch.

And the rep did call back, but unfortunately didn't have many suggestions other than to take it to a shoe repair place to see if they could patch it somehow or to affix a heel pad on the back. She did tell me that as a goodwill gesture, the manager of Phillips wanted to offer me $20 off my next shoe purchase. How nice is that?

The manager called me back later and got my mailing address, and the mailman brought me two $10-off certificates yesterday.

So here's a HUGE shout-out to Phillips Shoes and particularly to the manager at Folly Road. You totally rock and I will be in there soon to enjoy a little shoe shopping.