Sheila G.

My dog has to be dressed all the time because he has alopecia, and it's very hard to purchase clothes online because the sizes cannot be trusted. When I found a brand that fit well, they were hard to find and the prices were outrageous and inconsistent. Most retailers would have one or two items at a decent price, but the prices of other items were much higher. That's how I stumbled across the State Line Tack website. Their prices were the best I had found for all the items I was looking for and there was a 25% discount applied to 4 of the 6 items I had chosen, so I thought I had hit the proverbial jackpot. I created an account, selected the shipping option I wanted, and proceeded to checkout. When it came time to select the payment option, I selected PayPal and, at that point, everything in the shopping cart was exactly what it should be. However, when I was redirected to PayPal to complete the process, the total amount due was higher than it had been in the shopping cart so I cancelled the payment process and returned to the shopping cart to find out why. What I found initially was that the 25% discount had changed to 15% without warning. With some difficulty, I was finally able to change it back to 25%, but the total was still wrong. Eventually, I discovered that the charge for economy shipping that I had chosen had increased from $7.99 to $9.99, again without warning. Since the shipping cost is supposedly based on weight and the items were exactly the same, this didn't make sense and I found no explanation. Granted, it was only a $2.00 difference, but the fact that it was increased without warning and for no reason left me with the feeling that they were intentionally increasing the charges in small increments with the hope that I wouldn't notice, which is very underhanded. Regardless of the amount I'm spending, I don't do business with any retailer that I can't trust to be open and upfront about their charges, so I did not place the order. Now, after reading so many negative reviews for other customer services issues, I am so very glad that I found out what this company was like before I actually spent any money, and I know better than to even try. I would much rather pay a higher price to a reputable company.

My problem with this site has to do with honesty and transparency. I have made several purchases over the past couple of months and have been very pleased with every purchase except one. I posted 5-star reviews of the jewelry I had posted and those reviews appeared on the site immediately and are still there. However, I also posted a 2-star review for the one item that I was extremely disappointed in and, although the review was confirmed and immediately appeared on the page, it had disappeared when I refreshed the page. That happened twice on two different days and I can't find any other negative reviews on the site, so it appears to me that all negative reviews are being automatically deleted, and I have informed them that I will no longer purchase anything from a site that obviously has something to hide.

I have purchased several pairs of shoes per year for myself and various family members at Shoes.com (formerly ShoeBuy.com) for many years and never had a problem before, presumably because I was ordering shoes that I was familiar with and knew exactly what size to get, and I ordered the same brands and styles repeatedly, so I never had to worry about returns or dealing with customer service. Recently, however, I ordered some very expensive orthotic shoes for both myself and my mother, and it was a nightmare. I did a lot of research before deciding which brand and style to order, and my decision was ultimately based on the information provided by Shoes.com as well as the glowing 4- and 5-star reviews. The website said that the shoes ran small and recommended ordering a larger size that you would normally wear, and reviews stated that they were only small in width, not length. I normally wear a 7 wide and my mother normally wears a 6, so I ordered a 7 extra wide for myself and a 6 wide for my mother. Mine were huge but I still drove 30 miles to drop off the other pair to my mother, hoping that hers would fit better. She had the same result but, rather than making a special trip to pick them up, and because Shoes.com makes such a big deal of their free returns and exchanges policy, I simply ordered another pair for myself in a 6.5 wide, thinking that I would return the other two pairs for a refund after my next visit to her, as she had decided that she didn't want another pair. The second pair that I had ordered for myself also turned out to be huge so I tried on the pair that I got back from her and they were also too big. Mind you, this pair was a full size smaller than I normally wear and they were still too big, even though Shoes.com said they run small. At that point, I just figured I would return all 3 pairs at their expense and the only thing I would have lost would be my time. They did send pre-paid return labels, but they charged me a total of $20.85 because the fine print buried deep in the website says that you have to pay a restocking fee of $6.95 for each pair that you return for a refund rather than exchanging. So much for the free returns and exchanges that they have plastered all over the website. But still, even though the restocking fees came as a shock, I accepted it and chalked it up to a lesson learned. But in order to hopefully prevent someone else from going through the same ordeal, I submitted a very respectful but detailed review... and it was never posted. A week later, I submitted a second review that was also not posted. Now I know why all the reviews are 4 and 5 stars... because Shoes.com refuses to post any review that might hurt their bottom line. It's sad really, because this was the only place that I have purchased shoes for so many years, and now I will never shop there again.