Sunday, November 20, 2011

Beyond Review


My shoes have arrived!! I ordered them from Beyond The Rack a while ago, and posted when I did order them. Now that they are here I am going to do a full review on the service from Beyond The Rack & the shoes themselves. I took the pics with a friends iPad 2 so they are much better quality than my own photos. =]

I have a few things to say about this purchase & Beyond The Rack's service. Check the original post to read about the order for info on the deal, price, etc.

First, when you place your order Beyond The Rack tells you about their far from normal shipping process. At least to me it is. It takes 2 to 3 WEEKS from the time you place the order for the item to even arrive at BTR. They don't even have the products when you order them. After their sales end they order from the brands so they only get items that have been ordered from them by customers. Here's a little screenshot of the process breakdown they sent me in my order confirmation email.


Their whole shipping process is just wacky. I wasn't really in a super rush to receive these shoes so the wait wasn't that bad for me, although the red wedges would have come in handy for Halloween shoes. If these were shoes I wanted to have ASAP I would have been really pissed at this ridiculous process. Let me show you the full shipping delay & then run around it had after it finally did ship out. If you plan on ordering from BTR I suggest you read this part.

So I placed my order on Sun 10/02/11 7:42 AM. [I don't remember it being so early in the AM. If it really was it means I was up all night & went to bed shortly after that. Usual for me.]

Here is the timeline & emails I received from BTR since placing my order. I am copying exact time stamps from their emails.


Sun 10/09/11 10:19 AM
This is just a quick note to let you know that the following order is on track to arrive at Beyond the Rack within the next two weeks.

Sun 10/16/11 5:58 AM
This is just a quick note to let you know that your order is on track to arrive at Beyond the Rack.
We'll make it a priority to pack your order as soon as we receive it from the supplier.

Sun 10/23/11 9:00 AM
This is just a quick note to let you know that your order is on track to arrive at Beyond the Rack.
We'll make it a priority to pack your order as soon as we receive it from the supplier.

Sun 10/30/11 9:54 AM
Your order was initially scheduled to arrive at Beyond the Rack last week, but the delivery from the supplier is currently being delayed.
Due to this unforeseen setback, we'll be unable to pack and ship your order within the estimated 3-week timeline. Rest assured, we'll make it a priority to pack your order as soon as we receive it from the supplier. We'll make sure to keep you informed of all further developments, and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience.

---Apparently they only send out email of status updates on Sundays...?---

Tue 11/08/11 12:16 PM
We’re pleased to inform you that all (or part*) of your order number 1268882 has shipped.
You can expect to receive it any time between 2011-11-10 and 2011-11-16

---It was all of my order---

---Tracking timeline from FedEx---
Nov 8, 2011 1:41 PM
Shipment information sent to FedEx

Nov 9, 2011 4:07 PM
Picked up PLATTSBURGH, NY

Nov 9, 2011 8:17 PM
Arrived at FedEx location PLATTSBURGH, NY

Nov 9, 2011 9:17 PM
Left FedEx origin facility PLATTSBURGH, NY

Nov 10, 2011 1:15 AM
In transit SYRACUSE, NY

Nov 10, 2011 3:14 PM
Arrived at FedEx location FEDEX SMARTPOST ALLENTOWN, PA

Nov 11, 2011 12:21 AM
Departed FedEx location FEDEX SMARTPOST ALLENTOWN, PA

Nov 12, 2011 1:54 AM
Arrived at FedEx location FEDEX SMARTPOST EDISON, NJ

Nov 14, 2011 12:00 AM
Shipment information sent to U.S. Postal Service

Nov 14, 2011 3:48 AM
Departed FedEx location FEDEX SMARTPOST EDISON, NJ

Nov 14, 2011 7:10 AM
In transit

Nov 17, 2011 9:08 AM
At U.S. Postal Service facility. Arrived at local Post Office - Allow one to two additional days for delivery

Nov 17, 2011 10:43 AM
Delivered

October 2nd til November 17th!!! I have no idea why the package went from Upstate NY, to PA, to NJ back to NY to come to me in NYC. What is the point of that? Someone please tell me. I got curious and Google mapped the trip this package took. Quite a tour my shoes had. I can only assume they had no direct trips to NYC happening. Whatev.

And on top of that run around FedEx had to pass the package along to the local post office to be delivered by USPS. Why didn't FedEx just bring the shit straight to me? That I am sure is what BTR paid to have done & isn't FedEx's fault but come on BTR! It already took over 3 weeks to be shipped from BTR why give me an extra wait by passing it around? That was so ridiculous to me. I will be writing to BTR to tell them about this crap too.

Now after that super long shipping process, I finally receive my shoes.

This order is for 2 pairs of shoes. 2 shoe boxes are in this plastic bag they shipped me. Everyone knows, these packages aren't exactly handled like newborns during the shipping process. It is piled up, and tossed, and probably dropped. I have not a clue why they wouldn't send the shoes in a cardboard box to protect my shoes. All the banging around this package got directly damages the shoe boxes inside due to this plastic bag. Is that not common sense? I assumed it is. But then again, common sense isn't all that common.

This is how they were arranged in the bag

Smaller box on top of the bigger box. Ripped and caved in. Because of course, the package was tossed around, dropped, piled up, etc.
I hate ruined shoe boxes. I keep all my shoes & sneakers in boxes, for the time being anyway. So I like the shoe boxes to be nice & strong & undamaged! What is this mess?! At this point, I was already assuming there was some kind of damage to the shoes inside...

This is the smaller box of the 2.

Unzipped
there is also a zipper on the side. Both are needed to put the shoes on.

I found out the the front zipper will unzip completely which will remove the whole buckle/zipper piece from the shoe.

Upon inspection of the other shoe, I notice....
 Do you see it?

=\ Come ON!!!! I am a bit of a perfectionist, if you couldn't tell by my upset with the shoe box damage.. so though this is something small, it still bothers me. Today I went to look up BTR's return policy & they say damaged products much be reported within 3 days of delivery. Good thing I just checked because today is the last day to do that. I want to see what they offer me because I do like the shoes, & the damage is minor, but I am assuming they can't give me another pair of these shoes.. so I am not sure if I want to return them & get shoes elsewhere or just accept the minor damage. But I am reporting this right now. Actually yeah right now let me pause this post. 

Ok I wrote to them about the damaged boxes and the damaged shoe. Now to continue to the next pair. They were wrapped better but didn't have much stuffing inside the shoe & had a weird shape to them because of that. I stuffed them with my own tissue paper to hopefully fix that.


The color is a little off in the original photo. They are more like the color shown in the photo above. A darker red. Still nice. Probably even better than a bright red.

There is no mark on the shoe, that is just shadowing from the hanging string. I double checked after seeing these photos. =]

You can see a bit of the weird shaping in this photo. Right around the ankle area its caving in. They had a bit of weird shaping when on too but nothing unwearable for me.

I am happy with the undamaged red wedges. That's about it. Also I notice the boxes & inside of shoes are labeled Liliana. I was confused, remembering they were labeled on the site as being by Misbehave. Then I see a sticker on the box that had it as brand Misbehave.
Considering the rest of the mess with this order I started to think the shoes were a copycat of Misbehave shoes by this Liliana brand. I never owned shoes by either brand name before. So of course, I Googled it. =] And Liliana is a brand made by Misbehave. Now I know. Haha.

Overall Review
Basically, there was a lot of suckery in this order. The longest shipping process ever, the damaged shoe boxes, one damaged shoe, weird shaping to the red shoes though that is pretty livable.. I am not too happy. Lets see what BTR tells me about the damaged shoe & what they plan to do. I will definitely be VERY cautious if I ever order from them again. Actually, I probably won't unless they have some extremely gotta have that right now stuff at a good price. 

I had a much better experience with Haute Look. I did a post about products I ordered from there before so you can check that out. They were really awesome & the items were much cheaper than their regular price. Plus the shipping didn't take a month! =] Check it out, its basically an online sample sale site with lots of variety & its free to sign up. So why not? Exactly. GO!

Also I want to know if anyone has shoes similar to the red wedges. How do you wear them? I would love to see please send me any pics or blog links if you have them.

Questions
Have you ordered from Beyond The Rack before?
Are you signed up?
What about Haute Look?

Please share!


Until next time,
Lovely Shopdict


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

:) Thanks so much for your comment!

Lovely blog ^^
Feel free to visit me anytime again & maybe even follow each other if you like ^^

xx indie by heart

Anonymous said...

OH just noticed you did follow hihi! * back *

AestheticJungle said...

great post, lovely shoes!
now following your blog :)
xx

follow back? aestheticjungle.blogspot.com