ECCO Shoelace replacement

At first glance, you might think replacing shoe laces is a simple task, as I thought so, but it has turned out to be quite the project.
I purchased a pair of ECCO dress shoes 4 years ago this summer for my first internship. The shoes are very comfortable and perfect for a professional work environment. Over the four years, they have held up great. I have tried to keep them clean and polished so they continue to remain in great shape.
About 6-7 months ago the shoe laces started to fray. This has been the only issue I’ve experienced. I figured shoe laces are pretty cheap, especially compared to the price of a new pair of shoes, I should probably just replace the shoe laces. I ended up with a set of 3 pairs of shoe laces from Wal Mart for $3. These shoe laces turned out to be much more narrow and shorter than the original shoe laces. I’ve been using the shorter and more narrow shoe laces for the last 4 months and it has provided a very poor experience. As the knot comes undone easily due to the short shoe laces, I am constantly re-tying them. The shoe laces are difficult to tie as they’re too short to tie well or double knot and too narrow to grasp well when tying.
Since I research most of my purchases online before financially committing, I decided to do the same with a second attempt at shoe laces. To my surprise shoe laces come in a wide assortment with different lengths, materials, and widths. Not knowing what type of shoelace I had, as they were replaced months ago, I decided to look at the manufacturer’s web site, http://www.eccousa.com.
I looked through their web site at newer shoes trying to gather information on the types of shoe laces used in their dress shoes, but wasn’t able to gather much. I google’d ecco shoe laces and the first result pointed me to ECCO’s Customer Service FAQ. Apparently this is a commonly asked question, “Where can I get new shoe laces?”. The answer surprised me. They said to send a request to their customer service email address for replacement laces. After all this work, I figured a quick and simple email was worth a try. They also provided a link to a 3rd party dealer of shoe laces – http://www.shoelacesexpress.com/ . I did visit their site and found they had a few different options for ECCO black dress shoe laces, each costing $5 before tax/shipping.
ECCO Customer Service responded to my email and was very very helpful. They mailed me two pairs of shoe laces very quickly. Today is the first day I’m wearing them laced in my trusty ECCO shoes. ECCO went the extra mile and I appreciate it. They’ve made a dedicated customer out of me! Thanks ECCO!