Complaint Review: Cobblers of Warwick (Steve)

I was absolutely gutted when my expensive Delsey soft suitcase got damaged during a flight to Canada. Although I put fragile stickers all over it and was supposed to have had priority baggage handling, one of the leather protective corners got ripped. I found a mobile leather repairer in Canada to come to my hotel and repair it, but it wasn't an invisible repair, so the suitcase wasn't put back to its original state and the damage still upset me. The suitcase wasn't replaceable either as it was no longer made and was the old style without the metal trolley bars in the bottom, which you can't purchase any more, so it was very precious to me.

Before my return to the UK I did a search on google and found Cobblers of Warwick just up the road from my father's flat. I stayed up till 1am because of the 8 hour time difference and called them at 9am UK time to discuss the situation in advance. I talked to the owner Steve and told him how much the suitcase meant to me. He asked me to take some photos of the damage and e-mail them to him, which I did with my cell phone, and he e-mailed me back saying that he thought he could improve on the repair and to bring the suitcase in on my return to England.

When I got back I did this and to my horror, before I was even out of the door Steve got a knife out and ripped the existing repair open, even though I'd told him that the original repairer had been loath to try to improve upon the repair in case he made it worse and I was terrified of the same. Steve then dragged the suitcase into his back room and I could hear a machine going, then he brought the case back and started buffing it up. He said it was because the machine had made the leather corner shiny and he was trying to tone it down. I begged him to be careful, but he assured me that he knew what he was doing and certainly gave out a very confident and officious aura, and as a leather and luggage store, I thought he surely must, otherwise no way would he risk touching it. I kept saying "Please don't make it worse" and he promised me that he wouldn't. He said to leave the suitcase with him and call him in a few days' time.

When I called him, he said "Oh Debbie" like "Oh dear it's you" when I told him who I was and said he'd had to put a patch over the damage. I told him I didn't want this, so he said he'd take it off again. I asked him for reassurance that the suitcase wasn't worse than when I'd dropped it off and he said hesitantly "No, it isn't worse."

I couldn't believe the state of my suitcase when I went back for it. It was horrifying. The original rip was the size of a 10p piece, but Steve had totally wrecked and scuffed the whole corner, plus it was hard as a rock. When I complained and asked what he'd done to it, he got out his knife and went to attack the suitcase again. Both my friend and I screamed no and my friend grabbed the suitcase from him. We left without paying for it, no way was I going to this - as far as I was concerned, he owed me for the additional damage and the grief.

We dashed to Birmingham to a proper Delsey luggage repairer with me still shocked and crying my eyes out, where it cost me 45 to get the damage Steve had caused put as right as possible. I had to suffer endless torture for a week while I worried, fretted and stressed over it too. The Delsey luggage repair guy told me that it was a really really bad job and it took him a whole day of working on it, and I ended up with a suitcase that was far worse than the original rip and repair, plus I cried for days and days about it, and didn't eat or sleep properly for ages. The whole incident upset me beyond description - still does and I cringe if I go anywhere near Cobblers of Warwick now. I can't believe he's still in business.

In all the horror when I went to pick up the suitcase, I was stupid enough to leave a pair of boots for repair with Steve that I'd brought with me before I saw the damage he'd caused to the suitcase. One of the heels needed to be glued back on and both heels polished. When I went back to pick up the boots there was white glue sticking out of the top of the heel where he had glued it on and the polish on the heels looked really thin. When I got the boots home I noticed that the polish was coming off all over my hands and everything else the heels touched. Luckily this damage was fully repairable - I took the boots into Timpsons in Leamington Spa, who made an ace professional job of it and didn't even charge me after I explained what had happened. They made the glue invisible and the heel polish glossy.

Unfortunately the suitcase is too damaged to repair any further though. I snatched the boots from Steve when I went in for them, dreading what I was going to see. I questioned his tacky repair, but he tried to justify it and I couldn't be bothered to argue with him, I just wanted to get out of there ASAP. I told him that I wasn't going to pay for the boots regardless because as far as I was concerned, he owed me 130 for my damaged suitcase. I asked him why if he felt he couldn't improve on the existing repair, he hadn't honest about it and told me at the start, rather than bodging it up, especially as I had called him at great expense from Canada to tell him how much the suitcase meant to me. I said he knew how precious it was to me, but all he did was look shifty and clearly want me to stop telling the truth as there was another customer in the shop.

BUYER BEWARE!!!!!! PLEASE DON'T USE THIS GUY TO REPAIR YOUR SHOES AND LUGGAGE. He should have a sign outside his store that says Leather & Luggage Trasher, not Repairer.