Bit of back story, I spent 3 years doing telco contracting, climbing lots of ladders, walking a lot, working both indoor and outdoor in lots of weather. I completely wore out a pair of no-slip shoes for crews boots in those 3 years. After a brief stint at a warranty repair facility I got a job in IT that i've been doing for almost 7 years. When i first started i only had sneakers, so I wanted something more work appropriate. I got a pair of dressy dr scholls sneakers(faux leather). They wore out in maybe 3 weeks. I got an $80 pair of dress casual shoes at kohl's and they wore out in about 6 weeks. I do spend some time crawling around under desks hooking up cables, so the toes get pretty worn, and i walk a fair bit, but nowhere near as much as a lot of people. I finally took someone's recommendation and got a pair of redwings.
They were slip on moccasin style shoes, casual dress. I wore them for almost a full year before they started to come apart, mostly due to my abuse and lack of care. I took them in to the redwing store and they swapped them out for a brand new pair which i wore for over a year before one somehow went missing while on vacation. I got a pair of their slip on oxford safety toe shoes to replace them, and i've worn those ever since. I had been nursing plantar fascitis for a while and my insoles wore completely out(like all the way through) so I bought a pair of SOLE insoles to replace them about a year ago. Those helped my plantar fascitis and i've mostly recovered from that, but then the sides began blowing out. The right shoe by now is blown out almost front to back on both sides, and the left shoe is blown out on the inside from front to back. I'm past the point of desperately needing replacements.
I went into a redwing store and they said that model is discontinued, and said they don't have a direct placement, and showed me what they have that is similar. I decided to look around a little online and the brown oxford slip-on comfort pros seem to have terrible reviews including people saying they wore their previous pair for years and the last pair they got fell apart in 4 months. I've heard a lot of stores of recent fall off in quality of redwings. So i'm starting to hesitate about dropping $150 on another pair. So far alternate contenders include LL Bean and Wolverines, which both offer similar slip on casual dress work shoes in about the $80-120 price range. LL Bean seems to have a good warranty, I can't even find wolverine's warranty policy listed on their website.
Any thoughts or recommendations?
Submitted February 14, 2019 at 09:14PM by hzuiel http://bit.ly/2GtShb2
