Thursday Boot Company Shoe Sale

[mebejoseph]

It's disappointing, but I don't know if I'd go so far as calling it a scam. Judging by the time stamps in this thread (and the conversation about the site crashing and such), it sounds like a lot of people may have been waiting to pounce at midnight when the sale started.

They are still advertising "Pay What you Choose" on their website and everything is sold out. I couldn't buy any shoes last night trying for two hours. I tried as soon as I woke up this morning at 6:30.

EVERYTHING SOLD OUT.

They didn't say there was a limited number of shoes for sale. Indeed, they are saying it is still available for another 14 hours. And that's a lie when they do not have a single pair to sell.

It's driving traffic to their website and they don't have the goods.

But they are letting prospective buyers "reserve" a pair from the next batch. So, they are benefiting from advertising something they don't have.

You can bet it won't be at a choose your own price.

It's false advertising, it's a scam, and it's a crappy way to do business.

[kongmw]

It's like those black friday door buster deals where they claim something ridiculous like $200 for a 65 inch TV and have 2 units in stock.

[b. eliot]

I ordered at 8 AM ET and there were still a few options in my size, so definitely not a scam. I wasn't even in the shoe market so I would consider it a smart marketing move. I am sure it is disappointing to those who missed out, but given that we don't know what to expect from the first line, perhaps it is a blessing?

[neminat]

How is it a scam? how many shoes do you want them to sell for a loss?

[Token]

They are still advertising "Pay What you Choose" on their website and everything is sold out. I couldn't buy any shoes last night trying for two hours. I tried as soon as I woke up this morning at 6:30.

EVERYTHING SOLD OUT.

They didn't say there was a limited number of shoes for sale. Indeed, they are saying it is still available for another 14 hours. And that's a lie when they do not have a single pair to sell.

It's driving traffic to their website and they don't have the goods.

But they are letting prospective buyers "reserve" a pair from the next batch. So, they are benefiting from advertising something they don't have.

You can bet it won't be at a choose your own price.

It's false advertising, it's a scam, and it's a crappy way to do business.

They either didn't have enough supply to satisfy demand, or they didn't want to sell that many pairs of shoes for $80... either way now the site says that they are sold out. Based off of this thread alone, 4 people have said that they placed orders, so obviously some people were able to pay what they chose. The fact that their website couldn't handle that much traffic and subsequently you (and I'm sure others) weren't able to place an order sucks, but it's not all that uncommon when demand is super high especially since the advertised deal was so good. Yeah maybe they didn't have the most honest marketing strategy, but at the end of the day they're a company trying to make money, and they're not gonna be accomplishing that by selling their shoes at or below cost. The business customer relationship is a two way street: if you were a loyal TBC customer who's given them repeat business then I'd feel bad for you, but it's hard to feel bad for the customers who A) would never actually pay the normal $170 for their shoes and B) bought these shoes for $80 (the smallest amount possible). They basically sold $80 GYW shoes to get publicity rather than to make any money directly off the promotion, why would they have unlimited supply for a full 24 hours when the majority of people participating in this promotion will only be one time customers? If your intention was to pay the bare minimum for their product then I think at most you should expect the bare minimum of customer service.

[Rand81]

Darn missed out. Site didn't work when I tried last night and now everything is sold out.

Oh well, such is life. Hopefully will find a better deal on black dress shoes when I actually have the cash on hand to pay for it.

[Token]

How is it a scam. how many shoes do you want them to sell for a loss?

Exactly this. One thing I've learned after following style blogs and forums is that I could never work in retail and deal with customers and all their demands. It blows my mind how self serving some customers can be while not recognizing that businesses need to make money to survive. The people who abuse free returns to order 5 different sizes to try on and return, take advantage of glitches in promotional discounts to get pricing that clearly was not originally intended, or keep their mouths shut whenever there's a pricing or inventory error in their favor, are often the ones who are the loudest whenever something doesn't go their way. I remember some guy on reddit FMF (I think?) who abused a promo code to get 99 cent oxfords from JCrew and ordered like 50 of them. After JCrew canceled his order he was livid and ranted about how their customer service sucked and how they had lost a customer forever. Like ... what? Because a company refuses to basically give you 50 free shirts you're going to blacklist them?

I'm not saying that customers are being malicious in this TBC case, but to your point, people need to keep things in perspective in that TBC was selling GYW shoes for cheaper than a lot of cemented crap. Yeah it sucks that you wasted time and couldn't order anything in your size but at the end of the day the promotion wasn't designed to directly make any money, it was for publicity.

[ryan850]

It's definitely not a scam. It did exactly what they wanted. It created awareness for the brand and drove traffic to their site.

How is this sale any different than others. When they run out, they run out. No one complains when other manufacturers does this.

It's not like they promised everyone a pair of shoes at the lower price.

With that said, I actually was able to order a couple pairs. I want planning on buying anything because I assumed they would be sold out.

But but when my daughter woke me up at 3 on the morning PST I decided wth and jumped on the site.

I ordered a black cap toe cause I needed one black pair of footwear for when I need a black pair of shoes...and also a natural ptb just cause.

Well see how they are. For 80, that's less than Cole haan, ecko, rockport, etc

[Shife]

Scam seems overly harsh. I bought a pair at around 7am and only a couple styles were sold out at that point. The pair of natural Statesman I bought are backordered and won't arrive until late may, so it looks like they were allowing a number of backorder slots to be filled in addition to selling the available stock on hand. Seeing as they crashed their website when the sale started at midnight, I can imagine they moved a lot of shoes with that volume of traffic.

[Shife]

They are still advertising "Pay What you Choose" on their website and everything is sold out. I couldn't buy any shoes last night trying for two hours. I tried as soon as I woke up this morning at 6:30.

EVERYTHING SOLD OUT.

They didn't say there was a limited number of shoes for sale. Indeed, they are saying it is still available for another 14 hours. And that's a lie when they do not have a single pair to sell.

It's driving traffic to their website and they don't have the goods.

But they are letting prospective buyers "reserve" a pair from the next batch. So, they are benefiting from advertising something they don't have.

You can bet it won't be at a choose your own price.

It's false advertising, it's a scam, and it's a crappy way to do business.

Dude... The sale started at midnight EST. When I looked and bought at 7am EST, only a couple styles were sold out. If you slept in and missed the sale, which they repeatedly stated on social media would end when supplies were out, then that's nobody's fault but yours.

Edit: My order acknowledgment was at 6:49am EST - for complete transparency.