Happy ending

I'm not talking about this this kind of happy ending--although, let's be honest, I would immediately think of that too. But I am rather talking about the happy ending to my rant on the New Balance Harrisburg outlet store.

About a week after posting that entry I got an email from Heather at Consumer Relations at New Balance Corporate. When I read this it completely made my day:

"We were recently made aware of your blog and more specifically the unpleasant experience you had with New Balance Harrisburg. This store is independently owned and operated and the experience you have had does not reflect our company's high standard of customer satisfaction and service. We would like to speak with you directly so that we can follow up on this issue with the NB Harrisburg store owner and store manager. We would also like to extend an offer to send you the shoes you should have received for free as they had originally promised. We do hope that we can correct this, as we do not want this experience to keep you from considering our products in the future.

"Please contact me directly by phone at your convenience. I will be away from my desk today from 11-12 and 2-4pm today. If you cannot reach me, please leave a voicemail with the best phone number where I can reach you. I will call you back as soon as possible."

Wow. First and foremost, this was totally beyond anything I expected to get out of that post. All I wanted to do was get the anger off my chest and warn others. So way to go NB Corporate for actually monitoring social media and engaging with it.

Second, this was just great customer service. When I called Heather to follow up she was extremely apologetic--to the point where I was getting embarrassed because I knew she had nothing to do with the incident. She explained to me that while this store wasn't a corporately owned store there are still standards in place that the store neglected and that that wasn't right. Also, she was going to share my post with the store manager so that they could see exactly what happened (yea for meticulously detailed posts!). Finally, she right then and there put in my order for free shoes--she even had a cheat sheet to know which shoes best matched up to my Brooks!

Third, about a month after returning the shoes to the NB Harrisburg store I still hadn't received a credit on my credit card. Of course my attempts to reach the store directly didn't work, so I dropped an email to Heather. In less than two hours she wrote back saying that she had spoken with the manager and had confirmation that a credit was issued to me AND had shared my blog with him as well. Whoa. Way to go Heather!!

Now, about these shoes.

The first thing I noticed about them is that the laces are bumpy. It looks like the latest generation of NB shoes have these bumpy laces that help the knot stay in place. I actually found that the shoe feels looser with these laces (which I don't like) but I do think it's a great idea, maybe it just needs some tweaking.

When I started running in them it was like a dream! I guess because I've run in the same Brooks model for so long I don't notice the cushion when I slip on a new pair. But these guys were support all over the place. They didn't make me feel fast, but they sure as hell made me feel like I could run forever.

My biggest critique of the shoes was that I started to get a pain in my arch from wearing them. I rotated in these shoes at the peak of training for The Flying Pig, which meant they came just in time for the longest tempo runs, the hardest hill work, and the most punishing speedwork. Around the same time I started developing a pain/soreness in my arches that I hadn't gotten before. However, now, almost a month post-race, I'm feeling fine in the shoes and my arches don't hurt. So I will probably just regulate these shoes to the shorter and slower mileage and hopefully avoid any further pain.

So overall: a good shoe for the short easy midweek runs and for the LSD Saturday runs. Bad shoe if you want to rock out some 800s on the track.