A Crock of Crocs Crocs Rocks

On February 26, 2008, I sent the following missive to Crocs Customer Service, through their website. It has been eleven days and I haven't heard back from them. Not even a standard form e-mail advising me that they got my message and are reviewing it carefully. Silence.

So I decided to post this here, in case any Crocs executives happen to read BillyBlog:

I was just writing to express disappointment in the quality of one of your products, a children's backpack.

In August 2007, my daughter, aged 11 and entering intermediate school, was looking for a backpack. We shopped for many in numerous stores, but she kept going back to a Crocs backpack at Modell's Sporting Goods. It was considerably more expensive than some of our other options (i.e. Jansport), but she begged and pleaded like only an 11-year old girl can, and we gave in. We justified the extra expense (it was 20 dollars more than the one I wanted to buy) because we figured, based on the Crocs name, that it would be a durable product that would get her through the school year, and be a useful tool above and beyond the 6th grade.

We were wrong.

We were gravely disappointed at the end of 2007 when my daughter showed me where the backpack had ripped, at the top of the main pocket, as a result of stress on the backpack. Kids books can be heavy nowadays, but I would have assumed that this would have been taken into consideration when the product was manufactured.

We bought her a new backpack which, despite being a little less exciting and "trendy", seems to be doing just as well.

I just wanted to write to let you know that my initial experience with Crocs products, despite the fact that they are generally adored by the masses, was less than stellar.

You may want to have your design team spend some more time on your backpacks in the future, so as to avoid the disappointment of other parents and children.

Sincerely,

Bill Cohen


UPDATE 3/12/2008 I received, much to my pleasure and surprise, a very positive response from Crocs regarding this post. No, really, I did. To see it, head here. Needless to say, my opinion of the company has significantly improved based on the response.