Test shopping for kids? shoes with a camera team from Austrian television

On August 1, the consumer service programme ?Konkret? on Austrian TV reported on the results of a ?test shopping expedition? for children?s shoes (ORF 2, 6:30 -7:00 pm).

The Austrian research team ?Children?s Feet ? Children?s Shoes? went too, of course ? afterwards we tested the shoes purchased and evaluated the quality of the information provided by sales personnel.

• The good news: All the shoes purchased fit our young test subjects well.
• As expected: A comparison of the labelled shoe size and the actual length of the shoes showed that 2 out of 3 children?s shoes are shorter than they should be.
• The bad news: The quality of the sales advice provided by sales personnel could definitely be better. Many sales assistants used inappropriate methods to test fit (for example, inserting the thumb between the heel and the back of the shoe) and gave out incorrect information about the growth rate of kids? feet (for example, ?It’s impossible to say how fast kids? feet grow; it?s different for each child?).

Link to the programme: http://tv.orf.at/konkret/