Terrible customer service and return policies. In mid December, 2021, I placed an online order, on behalf of my spouse, for a pair of boots, as a Christmas gift, to be picked up in store. I got the boots the next day. My spouse received the boots that day. The boots were the correct size, fit her feet, but were unfortunately very uncomfortable to wear. My spouse elected to continue wearing her old non-waterproof boots, instead of these pooly assembled Softmoc boots. After Christmas, I tried returning the uncomfortable pair of boots to the Ottawa Place d'Orleans store. The store employee took almost 30 minutes in correspondence with virtualbcustomer service, to process my refund. Although the return was for an unused subpar product, with the receipt, withing the allowable return time frame, the return could NOT be allowed without the original box? There was no mention of this box/original packaging requirement within there return policy, on the store receipt or online. I tried calling customer service several times, but kept getting hung up on, with the automated phone system? My 6 year kid was also becoming more and more restless, adding to my stress. In the end, I foolishly elected to take a store gift card, instead of returning home to seek out the stupid box. I figured my spouse would find another more suitable pair of boots from Softmoc. The store rep never told me that the store gift card was non-refundable, if no other store product could be found. Unfortunately, my spouse could NOT find any other boots from Softmoc that she was interested in. Also, the original boot box was found. Upon my return to Place d'Orleans Softmoc, a few days later, I was informed on the non-refundable gift card policy, by the same useless employee, after another lengthy virtual consultation with virtual customer service. My calls to customer, on another phone line than the website, actually quickly led me to a customer service rep, who repeated their inability to refund me the value of the gift card. The manager repeated the same line, like a parrot, hiding behind the inflexible internal policies. Softmoc is by far the worst shoe store I have ever had the displeasure of being associated with. The products are of poor quality. The staff are not very knowledgeable or helpful, and customer service are absolutely pathetic. Please avoid associating with them. If you do anyway, hold on to your receipt AND THE BOX!!!