KawauchiFTW wrote:
I think if you take them out for a quick "fit" run on a treadmill, 1-2 miles, or walk around your house indoors, you should be fine... But I'm surprised if people would take them outside on a 10 mile run and then return it... In my eyes that's abuse of the return policy, and if more people were doing it I wouldn't be surprised if they re-considered their very liberal return policies... Just my 2c...
The same thing happened to REI when more people started to abuse their return policy and screwing it up for everybody:(
But this is exactly their policy---ie, take them out for a run, if you don't like them, return them. Functionally it makes no difference, and it's not a question of "abuse"---shoes in this sense are binary: new or not new. Two miles on a treadmill? Not new! Twenty runs in a drainage ditch? Not new! They can't resell shoes that have been worn for 1 mile on a treadmill as new. What would be abuse is returning a pair of shoes after 80 days, say, 4 times in a row, thereby getting 4 pairs of shoes, and a year of running, for the price of one pair of shoes.
Their policies have an important business rationale...if you can't try (not try on) shoes and then return them, why would you ever buy running shoes online? Better to go to the LRS and try a pair on the treadmill there. Returns is the cost of doing biz on the internet. And returning a pair of worn VF 4% (which I did; 8 miles on the road) does not mean RW loses $250. I mean, yes, they lost the sale, but they're only in the hole whatever they paid Nike for them minus whatever Nike gives them for pulped shoes. TL/DR: It's not abuse, it's their policy.