Reality check, would it be asking too much…

Curious, what is the retailer's customer service doing for you? If you go the diy repair route, Barge Cement works fine.

Ken thanks for the tip on the Cement. The retailer was REI which will cover me with no problem on a return. I contacted Hoka first for two reasons. One it would have been a lot easier on me to ship instead of driving. Second I hate to have REI eat the expense of the return. Its not their fault for the improper workmanship on the item and they shouldn't, at least IMO, get stuck with these and then have to put them in a garage sale or something. I was also interested in knowing if they had had issues with this new model run. I was just raving to my wife about the comfort of the shoes themselves but honestly I believe if I keep them they are going to fall apart pretty quickly. At 180 clams – the REI 10% that's still a kick in the (bleeps). I may wait a while and see what happens. I have another trip coming up and man these things are like walking barefoot on foamy kitchen mats :)

REI shouldn't need to eat the cost of the return. They can file a warranty claim with Hoka and get a full credit back. I work at a store that sells shoes and we do this all the time.

Thanks Justin, I wont sweat a return to REI. Bummer they are so far away from me and I rarely need to go there. Oh well life is like that. Now I need to decide if I should take another shot at these when they inevitably fail big.

In your original post, do you mean that your options are to return it to REI or pay for shipping back to Hoka? If that's the case I don't think it's that unreasonable for them to make you pay for shipping. They should still pay for shipping though.

REI will accept a return through their online/mail order fulfillment. Contact a rep on the phone or website.

many if not most manufacturers require you to ship the item back to them thats ones of the main reasons i buy my stuff at MEC if the price difference is not too great if i ever have to ship stuff back to yankee manufacturers, it gets pretty costly ;)

Justin, yes, I would normally agree with you that shipping an item back for repair or warrantee replacement would not be asking too much if we were not talking about an 8 day failure. For instance if it were months later there would be no telling from the MFG if I simply wore out the item or used it negligently and caused a non factory defective problem. In that scenario they would want to have the item for inspection before replacing. But man if I were Hoka or any other MFG for that natter I would have no problem fronting the shipping. One, to keep the customer(s). I have serious doubts now about trying another pair, even though I really liked the shoes, and my wife disregards my raving about the comfort because of quality issues. And two, I would want to see exactly what was going on with my product so I could determine what I was going to do about it to prevent further bad reviews. That alone, at least in my business experience would be worth the call tag. But again, it may be just me. Either way I appreciate the reality check from you guys and I will be off to REI to return/replace/exchange?? thanks again folks, jimmyb