Crocs

Early on the Wednesday morning before Thanksgiving, I purchased two pair of Crocs shoes from the San Marcos, Texas factory outlet store. Since the color I wanted was not in stock locally, I was offered the opportunity to pay at the store (taking advantage of a BOGOHO special) and have the shoes shipped to me for free. It seemed like a good deal, and this seems to be the location that fulfills these types of purchases.
The local order taking process took easily a half-​hour and seemed more like an hour. Among the problems encountered were:
— A one-​time use code that had to be obtained no less than three times via a call to corporate due to a comedy of errors.
— An iPad that wouldn’t work at first, because it was taking an update from the mothership.
— Then, the iPad refused to progress past a point in the ordering process.
— Then, the card swiper didn’t work because someone forgot to charge it overnight.
After several failed attempts at entering the information from no less than two different credit cards manually, the frustrated (but apologetic) clerk finally went to the back with my credit card, plugged the device into the charger, and successfully completed the transaction. I was told I would have my shoes in 7 – 10 days. Well, at least that’s over! Yay!
You’d think the rest of the process had to go more smoothly, but, wait, there’s more! Although I received an e-​mail receipt immediately which included a confirmation number, that number could not be accessed from the Crocs order tracking page for nearly a week. Customer service could confirm the order was in process, I just couldn’t see the order myself until the following Tuesday.
Once I could finally see my order on Crocs website, I found it had taken:
— 3 days for Crocs to send the electronic shipping information to the carrier
— 6 days for Crocs to actually deliver the item to the carrier
— 3 days for the carrier to ship from LA to Houston
— 1 day to get from Houston to Austin
— An anticipated 4 additional days for it to make it from the carrier’s Austin depot to my house
I still don’t have my purchase, and it looks like it will take the full 10 BUSINESS days (15 calendar days) to receive it due to built-​in intentional delays that seem to be designed to force a shipping upgrade from free.
To add burn atop burn, it turns out I could have saved myself the wasted time in the retail outlet and placed an internet order myself the next day without all the drama and still receive the same discount.
Love the shoes, detest the drama. Life is too short. I’m never doing this again.
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UPDATE: Even though the shoes arrived far later than expected on December 6^th, I have to thank Mia at Crocs for going the extra mile. When I called her Wednesday night, I was not a happy camper, but I was polite. She was so concerned that she chased down the delivery herself the next day, and thoughtfully called back to tell me the package would be delivered Friday. It was actually delivered a day earlier on Thursday. They get two stars back for delivering with high touch service in the end.