It may look like a beat-up old pair of hiking boots, but in fact it’s a pair of beat-up old hiking boots with new soles, lining, heel-counters, shanks, hardware, laces and one hell of a cleaning and reconditioning job.

Around 4 years ago I bought this pair of Danner Lights. They were worn fairly close to daily, and have some hard miles on them hiking and backpacking.

Sent them in to Danner for their recrafting service. 4-6 weeks and a couple days for shipping later I just got them back.

They’re just the tiniest bit snug because of the new lining, but otherwise these are unmistakably my boots that have broken in to fit my feet, but the soles still have treads on them.

Also, Danner customer service was great to deal with. When I shipped my boots out to them, I got the notification that they had been delivered, but after a day or two I hadn’t gotten the email from Danner to confirm they received it. I wasn’t exactly worried, I figured it would probably take them a couple days to open the box and get my boots checked in, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to give them a call anyway.

After a reasonable number of rings, my call was answered by an actual human.

And one with no heavy accent, who didn’t mumble into the phone, and had no attitude problem, and most astoundingly, actually worked for Danner at their office.

But so I asked if there was any way he could confirm that my boots had been delivered to the right place. He took my tracking info, looked it up, and was able to tell me that yes, they had them, because he knew the guy who signed for them.

And then he gave me a direct number to the recrafting department in case I needed to follow up with them any further (I didn’t feel any need for that, but after recently going through hell trying to get in touch with anyone at the local delivery hub for a company that was supposed to deliver some new appliances for me with no luck to figure out what the hell was going on with repeated delivery delays, I really appreciated that)

It’s kind of sad that I’m so used to automated menus, outsourced call centers, and customer service reps who clearly want to be doing anything else but helping me (not that I blame them, I don’t want to work either) that that’s all it takes to make a customer service experience feel great.

If I have any complaints at all about my experience, it’s that the white stitching around the soles was replaced with brown. I thought the white looked pretty sharp, but these are hiking boots they’re just going to get dirty anyway.

But anyway, I’m really happy with my experience, and I’m looking forward to hopefully another 4+ years with these boots.