Hey fellow current and former retail drones - check me on this?
So I bought a pair of boots for my birthday - three months ago. Practically to the day. I paid $100, blithely assuming that that would make them better than the $40 ones I usually buy. At the one month mark I noticed the soles were disintegrating. I took them back. The manager said "no, they're fine, if you wear a hole right through 'em that might be a fault". I was unimpressed. Friday I noticed my left heel was kinda cold. Close inspection revealed the upper had totally separated from the sole in about a 3cm line, right at the glue join. I wore them on Saturday anyway but took them to the shoe repair guy everyone says is best, by which point the separation had grown to about 6cm. He said he could fix it but it wouldn't hold more than a week. (He also said a few more things about their shitty shoe construction.)
Now, I am lucky enough to be doing quite well financially, at the moment, and justified the purchase of a new, significantly better pair of boots from the nice and honest shoe guy (that cost more than I would have liked but if they last like they said they will it'll work out about the same as a new pair of Walmart/Kmart/Target boots every year), so my immediate problem is solved. I have no faith that unhelpful retailer will be anything other than unhelpful given the boots are now three months old, so I don't want to bother taking them back. I also think if I raise a fuss they'll give me store credit. I don't want it. I never intend to buy any further shoes from them regardless of the refund.
Do I bother emailing corporate? Like, I don't need issue resolution, but if I just walk away from this they'll never know why I'll never go back, and I feel like they should. They pretend to sell quality shoes. That pretense needs better products backing it up. Store-level complaints aren't going to do it, but maybe higher up would? Or am I wasting my breath?