Real rubber rain boots / wellies … but what brand?
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Smelly waterproofs
- Posts: 59
- Joined: December 28th, 2024, 7:45 pm
- Location: Dorset, England
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latexstorm
- Posts: 79
- Joined: January 30th, 2010, 9:25 pm
Re: Real rubber rain boots / wellies … but what brand?
I have a different take on the notion that Aigle and le Chameau make "expensive" boots.
My current pair of Aigles are five years old. That's five years of near-everyday wear during the rainy season here, which usually runs October thru April, plus all of the days during the rest of the year when it rains. They're still in great shape and will last another two or three years with a reasonable amount of care.
(I also own a pair of Lacrosse rubber waders that I love to wear, and my wife and I own matching pairs of brand-unknown rubber waders that we refer to as our "fucking boots" (that's a verb, not an adjective, for those keeping score at home). But when I'm wearing rubber boots, it's the Aigles on my feet 90 percent of the time.)
Before that, I owned a pair of Le Chameau boots that lasted I think seven years. They will leak, but only if I wear them in standing water for a minute or two. So they're still on the bench as a reserve player.
And before that? Well, before that, I owned a pair of Hunters.One boot started to leak like a goddamned sieve barely a MONTH after I bought them. The other boot followed suit in short order. There was a problem of some sort at the point where the soles attached to the uppers, and they quickly became unwearable in wet weather.
And then, when I asked Hunter to honor their warranty, they did so only after a lot of unhelpful grumbling and pushback.There were suggestions that I had failed to take care of the boots and that the problem was my fault.
Assholes. As if anything I did or didn't do, in terms of care and upkeep, would have mattered the space of four weeks. Their customer service had apparently been tasked with flapping their gums at me until I gave up and went away, but that wasn't happening. I got my refund, but only after threatening to request a chargeback and let AMEX deal with them.
Anyway, in terms of comparative life span, the Aigles are currently whipping Hunter like the penny-pinching little shitstains they proved themselves to be, to the tune of . . . 60-1. And counting.
I would also happily bet my last dollar on either Aigle or le Chameau making good on a product defect without hesitation or complaint.
The people who make Aigle boots, in many cases, are doing the same jobs their parents and grandparents did. I rather imagine that if they got a bad pair of boots back from a customer, somebody would feel individually responsible for letting it happen. Hunter, on the other hand, clearly can't find even the tiniest little fuck to give about quality. They're fueling their business on decades of accumulated brand value, oblivious to what will happen when that value is gone and they run a once-iconic brand straight into the ground.
Nice work, fucknuts. Build your future one disgusted ex-customer at a time.
My current pair of Aigles are five years old. That's five years of near-everyday wear during the rainy season here, which usually runs October thru April, plus all of the days during the rest of the year when it rains. They're still in great shape and will last another two or three years with a reasonable amount of care.
(I also own a pair of Lacrosse rubber waders that I love to wear, and my wife and I own matching pairs of brand-unknown rubber waders that we refer to as our "fucking boots" (that's a verb, not an adjective, for those keeping score at home). But when I'm wearing rubber boots, it's the Aigles on my feet 90 percent of the time.)
Before that, I owned a pair of Le Chameau boots that lasted I think seven years. They will leak, but only if I wear them in standing water for a minute or two. So they're still on the bench as a reserve player.
And before that? Well, before that, I owned a pair of Hunters.One boot started to leak like a goddamned sieve barely a MONTH after I bought them. The other boot followed suit in short order. There was a problem of some sort at the point where the soles attached to the uppers, and they quickly became unwearable in wet weather.
And then, when I asked Hunter to honor their warranty, they did so only after a lot of unhelpful grumbling and pushback.There were suggestions that I had failed to take care of the boots and that the problem was my fault.
Assholes. As if anything I did or didn't do, in terms of care and upkeep, would have mattered the space of four weeks. Their customer service had apparently been tasked with flapping their gums at me until I gave up and went away, but that wasn't happening. I got my refund, but only after threatening to request a chargeback and let AMEX deal with them.
Anyway, in terms of comparative life span, the Aigles are currently whipping Hunter like the penny-pinching little shitstains they proved themselves to be, to the tune of . . . 60-1. And counting.
I would also happily bet my last dollar on either Aigle or le Chameau making good on a product defect without hesitation or complaint.
The people who make Aigle boots, in many cases, are doing the same jobs their parents and grandparents did. I rather imagine that if they got a bad pair of boots back from a customer, somebody would feel individually responsible for letting it happen. Hunter, on the other hand, clearly can't find even the tiniest little fuck to give about quality. They're fueling their business on decades of accumulated brand value, oblivious to what will happen when that value is gone and they run a once-iconic brand straight into the ground.
Nice work, fucknuts. Build your future one disgusted ex-customer at a time.