If you’ve bought running shoes in a Sports Authority in the past year or so, you’ve likely been confronted with an offer for an Extended Coverage Plan for footwear replacement. The way the plan is described is this: You pay an extra $5 to $16 dollars depending on the cost tier of your shoes, and if they fail within a year, you get a refund/gift card for the purchase price. For high mileage runners, who can totally destroy the midsole of a pair of shoes in three months or less, this deal sounds too good to be true. Which is why the first time I was offered the warranty, I passed with hardly a second thought. And why I thought I’d share my experience with the program, which I eventually tried, with fellow runners, especially since the experiment generated so much conversation and speculation during subsequent group long runs. Here’s what happened.
While I’m a big fan of and try to patronize specialty running stores for my gear, I tend to shop at Sports Authority for shoes because unlike many other stores, they consistently carry the Nike Air Pegasus (this is the neutral, moderately-cushioned running shoe my foot likes best), and the Pegasus ($85) is often on sale, sometimes for less than $70, sometimes for even less than $60.
Coming out of a peak marathon training cycle and readying myself for the Baystate Marathon in Lowell last October, I found myself back in the store sooner than I wished, coughing up $85 for a pair of Air Pegasus that were not on sale. Somehow, the combination of paying full price for the shoes and knowing the store had gotten my wife to try the warranty a few weeks before made me susceptible to the offer. I had this basic conversation with the shoe salesperson, and then almost the exact same conversation with the manager-clerk at the check out counter:
ME: So depending on what I’m training for, I run about 35 to 50 miles a week. The midsole in my shoes is often trashed after a couple of months, three months max.
SPORTS AUTHORITY: No problem. Just send them in.
ME: But unless I’ve been running in the winter, they won’t look trashed. Sometimes after two or three months of good weather running, my shoes still look almost new – no visible defects. But the midsole is shot and they’re no good for running anymore.
SA: It doesn’t matter. They’ll honor it. And if you had a problem, come back to the store and we’ll help you.
I was dubious. But I added $9.99 to the purchase price of the shoes and brought them home. Registered the warranty on the productassist.com/ecp Web site. Tucked my receipt and warranty plan into a safe place. Ran a marathon PR and a Boston-qualifying time in them. Paced my friend Curt on the narrow trails of the second half of the 50-mile Stone Cat ultramarathon in them. And generally pounded the heck out of them for a few months until my knees, ankles, feet and running log demanded I replace them. The midsole support was shot.
And here’s probably one of the main reasons why a replacement program like this can work in the warrantor’s favor: a semi-complex rebate process and consumer procrastination.
I put the shoes back in their box, checked the agreement, and realized I needed to file a claim on the Web site, wait for a mailing label to be emailed to me, ship the shoes out at my own cost, and then wait for the refund.
I tried to file the claim on the Web site, but it didn’t work and gave an error message. The site provided a phone number and asked me to call instead, which I did. I explained that the midsole was worn out, and I wanted to file a claim. The customer service rep was very pleasant, and emailed a printable mailing label to use in shipping back the shoes.
Clearly I needed a new pair of running shoes long before I could anticipate the refund, so I went and bought them, intending to send the shoes in shortly. I got back into the groove of work and running and family. And the shoes sat in the box in the study with the mailing label on top of them for two months, waiting for a convenient time for me to get to the post office. At some point the mailing label got mixed in with a bunch of scrap paper and thrown away.
It was March 2, and another pair of shoes later, before I finally got roused myself from rebate complexity stupor and called the company again for another mailing label. At lunchtime on March 4, I went to the UPS store by my office and shipped the shoes to the warranty company for $10.05, ground commercial. I followed the packaging directions to the letter, and included a copy of the receipt, the contract and a brief description of the problem: “As stated when requesting the return mailing label for these, the midsole support on the shoes has worn out. They no longer provide the cushioning or support necessary for running.”
On Wednesday, March 24, I got a letter from the warranty company with a Sports Authority gift card for the original purchase price of the shoes – $85.
It turns out the folks pushing the warranty in the shoe department were as good as their words. I have yet to spend the gift card, but will be buying a new pair of shoes in the next week, a few weeks prior to the Boston Marathon.
So in general, I’d say the program worked. Between the cost of the warranty and the shipping, it cost me about $20 and returned $85, which is a great deal. But it took a long time for me to get around to taking advantage of it, and then a couple of weeks for the refund to process. So if you were to rely on this for all your running shoe replacement, you’d have to be organized, and have a couple of pairs of shoes in rotation.
For the record, I have no relationship with Sports Authority or Nike other than as a customer, and I make no warranty that your experience with this rebate program would be the same as mine was, or even that mine would be the same next time. I’m just sharing my experience for the edification of those who expressed interest in the outcome of the experiment.
Tags: marathon, Nike Air Pegasus, rebate, Running, shoes, Sports Authority, training
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My local Sports Authority said they discontinued this “extended coverage plan” on footwear “a long time ago.” I was hoping to cash in on their stupidity, and I suppose too many people did.