Great shoes, bad service, long wait
The shoes are great, comfortable, well made and durable. The brand of the shoes is Alagalomi - an Italian brand, and if I were ever interested in ordering again I'd try directly with them, even given the import duties. This is because the customer service on Balanceo does not inspire any honesty or care.
When I placed my order, the website stated 5-6 weeks for the order delivery, so did the confirmation e-mail, so did the person who discussed the order with me by e-mail.
After 5 weeks I reached out to confirm as I needed to organise around upcoming travel plans. They said they will let me know in a couple of days if my shoes are in the next delivery. Then silence until I followed up 10 days later, to which I got a reply which sounded annoyed that they've already explained to me that it takes 8 weeks and I should be more understanding. To me this felt like a gaslighting attempt, which I called out and for which they never apologised. They tried to make it sound like I'm a problem client, I got it wrong and the delivery was meant to be 8 weeks all along. I don't understand their need to be dishonest here, you can just admit there are delays but why try to lie, be called out for it and not apologise?
Note despite the delays to their stated delivery timeline they will use the cheapest Royal Mail option to deliver the shoes (£4.45 in my case) and claim the rest (up to the £10 they charged for postage) is for their operational costs. Not sure about that business model but from a client experience it simply feels like I've been cheated.
They also tried to make me sound ungrateful that I wasn't available for them to deliver directly to me on the side of errands they happened to have near my address. In fact I was on my way back from a delayed long haul flight and I certainly didn't appreciate someone else getting shirty with me about not having made it home by the time it suited them and their plans to deliver this parcel. Also, given this would have been done because they were in the area anyway, common courtesy would have been to address in some way the delivery charge I had paid.
Moreover, the delivery was further delayed as they didn't write my full address on the parcel so Royal Mail couldn't deliver even if I was at home, I had to put time and effort myself to go to the depot on a Saturday to pick it up. When I pointed out that there was further delay because they didn't write the correct address, there was no acknowledgement, so no apology.
There is some value in ordering through them as they know the models well and can advise on the correct sizing, but I'd still reach out directly to Alagalomi, pay import duties, whatever else, and not deal again with the bad Balanceo attitude.