I stopped into the Adidas store in Zhongxiao. They were having a promotion: buy 2, get 1 free. It seemed like a good deal and I found several pairs of shoes I liked so I went ahead and bought two pairs in order to get the third free, figuring if nothing else I’d have another pair ready when one wore out.
While at the counter I noticed something a bit odd though: they had a notice which read something like: “Taiwan’s Consumer Protection act does not apply to physical items bought in a physical store, so for both the protection of the customer and the store make sure you check your purchase carefully before buying” - The implication being, as I understood it, that once you leave the store you’re stuck with what you bought - you can’t return anything. But then right underneath that was another paragraph saying something like: “If an item is defective it must be returned within seven days.” On top of that, the employees actually said a few times “no returns!” as the transaction was going through. I found it a bit odd, particularly since Adidas is an international company, and most stores by international brands here seem to have a 30 day return policy, yet here was Adidas, whose policy seemed to be to discourage any returns at all. I wasn’t too worried about it though because I had never actually gotten defective shoes before, and I didn’t anticipate needing to make a return. But something unexpected happened: I got home and discovered one of the pairs of shoes had no in-soles. Never experienced anything like that before! At the same time, as I was looking the shoe up on the internet I happened on Amazon’s site, and discovered that all the shoes in the Taipei Adidas store are about double the price of the price on Amazon. So far from getting a deal on this promotion, I actually paid a lot more than I needed to.
Given the amount of money involved, normally in this situation I’d want to return the shoes for a refund - but it seems that won’t be possible.
I guess I have learned a valuable lesson: don’t buy shoes by international brands in Taipei and always price check on Amazon. Hopefully this post can save someone else out there from making the same mistake.
But I’m still curious about the apparent lack of a return policy for this Adidas Taiwan store, particularly since every other international brand store here offers a 30 day return window - much longer than the typical Taiwan 7 day return period. Also, doing an internet search on Adidas return policy, everything I could find pointed to Adidas having a 30 day return policy not just in the US but in many other countries too - though I couldn’t find anything about Taiwan in particular.
What is it exactly that enables Adidas to do this in Taipei? Can anyone shed more light on the subject?