My email to Hotter: Some years ago, I was in the habit of buying your shoes on a regular basis, my favourite style being Click. At one point, I bought several pairs at once - it appeared that the style was being discontinued, so I bought them for future use. I wore all but two pairs, which have been kept, off the floor, in my bedroom ever since. Yesterday, I decided to start wearing them and put a pair on (this pair I had worn once or twice before in the house). I started moving around inside the house and very soon wondered why one shoe suddenly felt very odd. Upon inspection, I found that a large lump of the heel had simply fallen off. As I examined the shoes in disbelief, the soles just continued to disintegrate, leaving crumbs of what appeared to be some sort of foam material everywhere. I handled the shoes very carefully as I saw what was happening. As you will see from the attached photos (brown pair), the shoes are in otherwise excellent condition and it is infuriating that I cannot wear them - it is a total waste of a perfectly good pair of shoes, which are effectively unworn. This all happened, fortunately, before I went out, so I fetched the other pair of Click shoes I had kept and they were better - they had a sole made from a different material - but still showed signs of disintegration. They clearly will not last long at all. (The black pair in the photos). I find it incredible that a reputable company such as Hotter could have sold shoes made from such inferior materials - in fact these shoes were clearly not at all fit for purpose. I am aware that these shoes were bought some years ago, but that is no reason for them to disintegrate! That is simply not acceptable - I paid for them, but I cannot wear them, due to Hotter's negligence. I would be very interested to hear what you have to say for yourselves, and obviously I require some recompense for the shoes. I am not interested in vouchers or credit, as I no longer find Hotter shoes attractive and therefore do not buy them. Hotter's reply: We do have to take the age into consideration; in addition, long term storage and infrequent wear may be contributing factors to the issues encountered with the soles. However, we do not expect this type of issue to occur. We thank you for your feedback and deeply apologise for the inconvenience caused. In the years since your product was manufactured, we have, through natural production processes, modified the materials we now use. We can assure you that this type of incident should not arise in our more recently produced products and we sincerely hope this will restore your faith in us and not deter you from choosing Hotter in the future. As a gesture of goodwill, please accept a £15.00 credit added to your mail order account from us to put towards your next purchase. This amount can be used against any future purchase and has no expiry date. Please confirm if you would like to accept this credit and we will apply it to the account. Again, we deeply apologise for this issue and look forward to hearing from you. i.e. exactly word for word the same as to another complainant. I argued with their ridiculous "justification", but Hotter are not in the slightest interested in their customers, or evidently in the quality of their products, and refused any reasonable response. Rubbish shoes, rubbish company. Not surprised went bust.