To be fair, and to make this excruciatingly long, here is the e-mail exchange I had with Korkers after they were (ironically) sending me e-mails trying to get me to buy their stuff. The only reason they even had my e-mail address is because I had complained to them. To be fair, this Nick guy seems to actually care and demonstrated customer service completely unlike what I received during my initial contact with them.

E-mail thread starts below:
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Ironic that you would e-mail me as the only contact I've ever had with Korkers has been entirely negative.

I bought some of your shitty boots a while back and, like everyone else I've talked to that owned them, the soles started randomly falling off when wading. I called and talked to someone in Portland Korkers facility about the issue one time and they essentially called me a liar and told me that the boots I purchased "could not" have been purchased when I said they had because he had "taken them off of the shelves himself". At that point, I was offered the "deal" of sending them back for credit towards a better pair. No thanks.

Eventually, I convinced him to ship me the sole I was missing and I was charged something like $15.

After that, I've made sure to let my story be known to thousands of people via a prominent salmon and steelhead message board. It is amazing to me how many people have had similarly poor experiences. Sometimes, one asshole employee can have a large effect on future sales.

Loving my Simms,
AP
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On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 5:03 PM, Nick Colasurdo <Nick@korkers.com> wrote:

Aaron,

Thanks for the email, that sounds like a shitty deal and I apologize that no one took care of you properly. This company changed hands a little while ago and some things have certainly changed. I have been here about a year and a half and I handle all of our customer service now.

While I have talked to a few people who have had an issue with the Konvertible series boots, more often than not people seem to love those. For every bad review I have seen, there are plenty of good ones to go along with them. I just had a guy call up here the other day who wanted to buy another pair of the older models and refused to get an updated model that we offer now. I had to dig a pair out of a sample bin to sell him. Anyways, my point is that there are tons of people who have had those boots for 4-5 years and never had a problem. I do apologize that your situation wasn't handled properly though, that's not the way we operate these days. The old owner is gone and with him went the staff.

We have some really great new products and I would like to offer you something that we don't normally do. I understand that you have your Simms now, so you may not even be interested, but I can get you a new pair of Korkers boots for a very low price. Basically it would be close to our cost.

If you want, let me know if this is something you would be interested in.
Sorry to hear you had a bad experience.

Nick

From: AP
Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 1:36 PM
To: Nick Colasurdo
Subject: Re: Korkers Buy One, Get One Free Konvertible Sole Event

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Nick,

Thanks for the reply. I only wish I would have ended up talking with you when I called a while back. At the time, it was just so discouraging to call a fellow Pacific-Northwesterner and have that type of experience.

I appreciate the offer for a discounted rate on some new boots but I'm actually happy with what I've got now. I wish you luck in the future and hope you can overcome the unfortunate reputation that Korker has earned with a segment of the fishing popluation. Tight lines!

Thanks, Aaron