MP wrote
Gordonbp wrote
PeterC wrote

Anybody know what HiTech's IonMask is like for performance and
durability

Rubbish.

My sister bought a pair of HiTech's IonMask walking boots around £90 I
think sorry can’t remember exactly which ones, but I do know she got very
little wear out of them under 60 mile. As fair as I know the upper didn’t
let water in but marked and cut very easily. But the worst thing was the
soul very quickly came away from the leather upper allowing water in. I
tried to persuade her to return them to the shop but because she walks so
infrequently she said she had had them to long to take back.

I got some elastic sided boots and then decided not to wear them
essentially because they had very deep notches in the soles that
tended to pick up mud and were a damned nuisance for that reason.

Got some more and wore those every day in winter and when they
eventually died about a decade later, went back to those with the
very deep notches in the soles. Only wore them for a short time,
like a couple of weeks and had the soles crack right thru from
side to side.

I was pretty ****ed off about that because they had had
no real wear at all, so returned them to the manufacturer.
They said that they wouldn’t replace them because they
hadn't made them for a hell of a long time and so it was
too long ago, so I should **** off.

They have a web site that raves on about their commitment
to quality and were actually stupid enough to list the name
of the managing director on the web site. So I rang him up
and told him that I was very unhappy about that result given
what they said on the web site. He initially refused to do
anything about it, but eventually caved in and sent me
some new ones for free after I had chewed his ear for half
an hour or so and told him that the lace up boots I'd used
to build the house with hadn't split like that even in 30
years after I stopped wearing them because elastic sided
boots were much more convenient for daily wearing.

He did say that he hoped I wouldn’t take another decade
before I started using the new ones, and I didn’t, because
the replacements had a decent sole that didn’t pick up mud.
They did work pretty well and didn’t crack up like that this time.