Astoria, our latest shoe style and our most successful product to date, in the largest and most important order we’ve ever placed, was delivered to us this past weekend, and we have discovered that a large portion of the order has not met our quality expectations.
Basically, the factory didn’t use the materials we specified and while the construction of the shoes is fine, the quality of finish falls below the standard that we were promised and expect.
We’re afraid to say that we cannot in good conscience ship these shoes to our customers. Despite knowing that many of you depend on us for your footwear for upcoming events, these shoes do not represent what we sold to you, and we cannot say, hand on heart, that the Astoria represents an American Duchess shoe.
We’re very proud of our products and go to great lengths to make them the very best available in quality and price, and in this instance we feel that we’ve let both our customers and ourselves down. You cannot imagine how sorry we feel for breaking our promises on delivery dates and the inconvenience that this has caused our customers.
The long and short of it is: the entire shipment of both ivory and black Astorias is being remanufactured with an even higher quality calf leather than originally specified, and under a significantly tighter quality control regime than before. The quality of finish of these shoes will be everything that you expect.
The expedited remanufacturing process will take approximately 4 weeks plus shipping to the USA, so we will be expecting the remanufactured batch to arrive in the last week of April. This is the fastest that this can be done without cutting corners.
All of affected customers have been sent an email with more information about the situation. We continue to stand behind our 100% no questions asked money back guarantee, and will make every effort to continue to be available to our customers via email (info@american-duchess.com), telephone, and live chat, through www.american-duchess.com.
We thank you for your understanding, patience and support in these challenging times.
Most Sincerely,
Lauren & Chris
