Gecko
Registered user
In May this year I decided to splash out on some new boots after coming back from lands Ends with rather soggy feet in my 5 year old BMW Kalahari boots. After much research I decided to opt of some Sidi Discovery Tepor boots. They are not full blown MX boots but give more protection than a lot of touring boots and they are claimed to be waterproof. The quest to find them began and after much checking and asking I couldn't find them at all easily. Some dealers had never heard of them and others simply said they didn't stock that model. Finally I managed to track down a dealer in Holland and went off to check them out.
I liked them and bought them paying Euro 249,99 for them , with a free pair of biking socks thrown in by the dealer.
On the second day out with the boots, one of the plastic straps broke.
but not wanting to overreact I contacted the dealer who swore he had never heard of a strap breaking as I described it to him. He immediately offered to post me a couple of replacements free of charge 
A couple of weeks later and another strap broke.....now I'm getting a bit pizzed off
but as the dealer had sent me 2 straps I had a quick replacement to hand so no great problem.
In June we went off to play in the Enduro park in Hechlingen and on day 1, the 3rd strap broke so I spent 3 days doing the enduro course with duct tape holding my 6 week old boots together.
When I got home it was back to the dealer to show him the 2 other straps that had snapped in exactly the same way as the first (which he had never seen before...) and once again he did the honorable thing and gave me 2 new straps.
A few weeks on and without another broken strap I was beginning to relax when .....you guessed it another strap broke - but luckily I had 2 spares from the dealer so a quick fix was in order leaving me with just one spare strap in my jacket pocket.
Enough is enough so I dropped an email to Sidisport explaining my experiences and asking what they thought about it ........time ticked by but no reply from Sidisport (as I rather expected) . Yesterday I pulled up my earlier sent email and sent it again but this time with a rather stronger request that they think about their customer service attitude and product quality and took some time to answer my email. To put a bit of an edge on the email I did some research and looked up the name of Sidi's managing director and guessed at a couple of variations of his email address and blind copied him on the email too. I also mentioned that if I didn't hear from them within 7 days I was going back to the dealer and would demand a full refund because the boots were unfit for the purpose they were sold. I also mentioned that I would have no hesitation of posting my opinions on www.ukgsre.com and a few other web forums
(we have the power)
Less than 24 hours later I get a very apologetic email offering to send me a full set of new straps and saying that they had taking the matter up with their importer.
The moral of the story is that if you want a nice set of comfortable boots that are waterproof Sidi Discovery Tepor boots are up to the job and that if something goes wrong their customer services back up is there for you and will react (when given a nudge) . Despite my troubles with the straps I really like the boots and hopefully Sidisport's quality control will take my experiences into account in future. [yeah I know that's wishful thinking .....]
The offending straps
I liked them and bought them paying Euro 249,99 for them , with a free pair of biking socks thrown in by the dealer.
On the second day out with the boots, one of the plastic straps broke.
but not wanting to overreact I contacted the dealer who swore he had never heard of a strap breaking as I described it to him. He immediately offered to post me a couple of replacements free of charge A couple of weeks later and another strap broke.....now I'm getting a bit pizzed off
but as the dealer had sent me 2 straps I had a quick replacement to hand so no great problem.In June we went off to play in the Enduro park in Hechlingen and on day 1, the 3rd strap broke so I spent 3 days doing the enduro course with duct tape holding my 6 week old boots together.
When I got home it was back to the dealer to show him the 2 other straps that had snapped in exactly the same way as the first (which he had never seen before...) and once again he did the honorable thing and gave me 2 new straps.
A few weeks on and without another broken strap I was beginning to relax when .....you guessed it another strap broke - but luckily I had 2 spares from the dealer so a quick fix was in order leaving me with just one spare strap in my jacket pocket.
Enough is enough so I dropped an email to Sidisport explaining my experiences and asking what they thought about it ........time ticked by but no reply from Sidisport (as I rather expected) . Yesterday I pulled up my earlier sent email and sent it again but this time with a rather stronger request that they think about their customer service attitude and product quality and took some time to answer my email. To put a bit of an edge on the email I did some research and looked up the name of Sidi's managing director and guessed at a couple of variations of his email address and blind copied him on the email too. I also mentioned that if I didn't hear from them within 7 days I was going back to the dealer and would demand a full refund because the boots were unfit for the purpose they were sold. I also mentioned that I would have no hesitation of posting my opinions on www.ukgsre.com and a few other web forums
(we have the power) Less than 24 hours later I get a very apologetic email offering to send me a full set of new straps and saying that they had taking the matter up with their importer.
The moral of the story is that if you want a nice set of comfortable boots that are waterproof Sidi Discovery Tepor boots are up to the job and that if something goes wrong their customer services back up is there for you and will react (when given a nudge) . Despite my troubles with the straps I really like the boots and hopefully Sidisport's quality control will take my experiences into account in future. [yeah I know that's wishful thinking .....]
The offending straps
