Three years, and a clear line.

01What the guarantee is

Portuguese law (Decreto-Lei n.º 84/2021) gives a consumer a legal guarantee of conformity of 3 years from delivery. Within the first 2 years, any lack of conformity that appears is presumed to have existed at delivery, and it is for us to show otherwise. After that the guarantee still runs for the third year, and the burden of showing the defect existed at delivery is on you.

This is not a warranty we grant and can therefore withdraw. It is a right you have by law. Nothing on this site reduces it, and we offer no separate commercial warranty that could be mistaken for a replacement of it.

You may ask for, in this order:

1. Repair or replacement, at your choice, unless the one you choose is impossible or disproportionate.
2. A price reduction, or termination of the contract with a refund, where repair or replacement was not carried out in reasonable time, or would cause you significant inconvenience, or the defect is serious enough to justify it directly.

Repair or replacement is free: parts, labour and shipping both ways are ours to pay.

02What counts as a defect

These are covered. The list is drawn from what actually fails on bonded casual footwear, and it is not exhaustive.

• The sole separating from the upper. Any gap opening along the cement or cure line, at any point in the 3 years, under normal wear. This is the single most common genuine failure on this construction.
• A split or crack through the upper that is not the result of an impact or a cut — a hide flaw opening at a flex point, for example.
• An eyelet pulling out of the upper, or a metal eyelet corroding.
• Stitching that opens along a seam without the seam having been torn.
• The heel counter collapsing or breaking inside the shoe.
• The outsole cracking through, as opposed to wearing down.
• Delamination of the midsole, where the layers of the sole unit come apart.
• A lining that abrades through at the heel within normal use.
• Colour that transfers from the lining onto your foot or sock in a way we did not warn you about on the product page.
• The pair not matching what the product page said. If the label declares couro on the upper and the upper is not leather, that is a lack of conformity in the plainest sense, and it is one we take extremely seriously.

03What is the material doing what we said it would

These are not defects. Every one of them is stated on the product page before you buy, which is the condition on which we rely on this section at all: we cannot describe something as expected behaviour if we only mention it after you complain.

Yellowing

White leather, cream leather, undyed cotton and white rubber all turn warmer with time and with ultraviolet light. A midsole that has gone from bright white to warm cream over a season is oxidation of the rubber, not dirt on it and not a fault in it.

Example — not covered: a pair of A-01 White Cupsole worn through a summer, whose midsole is now noticeably creamy and whose toe cap has warmed slightly. Both are stated on the product page under “Yellowing”.

Example — covered: a pair whose midsole has gone yellow in a single sharp-edged patch where the rest is white, within weeks of delivery. That is a curing or contamination fault in the rubber, not ageing, and we replace it.

Creasing

The vamp folds where your foot folds. Creases appear across the forefoot inside the first wears and deepen from there. Softer leather creases sooner and more sharply.

Example — not covered: deep parallel creases across the forefoot of a suede pair after a month. Stated on the product page under “Creasing”.

Example — covered: a crease that has split the leather through, leaving an open line you can see the lining through. A crease is a fold; a crack is a failure of the hide, and it is covered.

Marks that will not clean out

Oil, grease, ink and dye lifted from dark denim penetrate the surface and generally stay. Every product page lists, by material, what comes out and what does not.

Example — not covered: a shadow of blue dye along the collar of a pale suede pair worn with new indigo denim. Stated on the product page under “Cleaning limits”.

Example — covered: colour coming out of our lining onto your sock. That is our dye, not your trousers.

Wearing out

A tread that has worn smooth, a heel that has worn down on one side, an insock that has flattened, laces that have frayed. These are consumption of the product, which is what it is for. Insocks and laces are sold separately for exactly this reason.

Because these shoes are bonded rather than stitched, they cannot be re-soled. When the outsole is worn through, the pair has reached the end of its life. That is a property of cupsole and vulcanised construction, it is stated on every product page next to the construction, and it is not a defect.

Damage from use or care

• Machine washing. It separates the sole from the upper, on every model here.
• Drying on a radiator or in direct sun, which shrinks and hardens leather permanently.
• Solvent cleaners on a coated leather, which lift the coating.
• A brass suede brush used on smooth leather.
• Cuts, impacts, chemical spills, and damage from an animal.

04How to make a claim

1. Write to support@alteicalcado.shop with your order reference and a short description of what has happened.
2. Attach photographs: the whole shoe, the area concerned close up, and the outsole. The outsole tells us how much the pair has been worn, which is relevant and which we would rather establish from a photograph than from an argument.
3. We answer within two business days with one of three things: a prepaid return label, a request for one more photograph, or a reasoned explanation of why we consider the complaint falls under the section above. If it is the third, you are free to disagree and the routes below remain open to you.
4. Where the claim is accepted, we repair or replace within 30 days of receiving the pair, or refund if neither is possible.

You must inform us of a lack of conformity within a reasonable period of discovering it. There is no fixed deadline in Portuguese law for a consumer to notify, but a claim made promptly is a claim that is easier for both of us to establish.

05If we disagree

Our view of a claim is not the last word, and we will never tell you it is. Three routes are open to you and none of them requires our agreement:

• The Livro de Reclamações Eletrónico. We must answer within 15 business days and send our reply to the competent authority.
• Alternative dispute resolution, and the EU online dispute resolution platform. Both are set out on Condições de venda.
• The courts of your place of residence, if you are a consumer in the European Union.

If you want a second opinion on whether a shoe has failed or aged, an independent footwear technician’s report carries weight with us, and where such a report finds in your favour we pay for it.

06The label and the guarantee

The three-row material label on each pair is a statement of fact about what the shoe is made of. If it is wrong, the shoe does not conform to the contract, whatever else may be right about it.

We use couro only for material that is leather within the meaning of Directive 94/11/EC, and never for a coated synthetic. Suede and nubuck are leather and are declared as such; a surface finish thicker than 0.15 mm makes the material couro revestido, and we declare that separately rather than folding it into couro. The full explanation of the label is here, and the yellowing and creasing boundary is set out there too, in the same terms as this page.