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I purchased a pair of VEJA children's sneakers brand new through Cettire in January. After only around four months of normal wear, the elastic laces snapped completely.
What followed was a deeply disappointing customer service experience that raised serious questions about VEJA's sustainability and after-sales support.
Initially, I was told the issue was due to children "not taking care of their footwear" and was advised to search online for replacements or visit a cobbler. No replacement laces, repair option, or practical solution was offered.
After further correspondence, VEJA confirmed that the elastic laces are proprietary, they cannot be purchased separately, no suppliers can be recommended, and there is effectively no repair pathway available for this component.
This means a pair of premium children's sneakers can become functionally unusable due to a single consumable part failure after a very short period of use, with no ability for the customer to repair or replace it. That is fundamentally at odds with the sustainability and longevity messaging heavily used in VEJA's branding.
When I raised concerns about durability and support, VEJA then suggested the shoes may not meet their quality standards or could potentially be "non-authentic" because they were purchased through Cettire, despite Cettire being a major international retailer that openly sells VEJA products.
At no point was there any constructive attempt to resolve the issue.
The communication throughout was impersonal, scripted, and dismissive in tone, with no meaningful engagement or effort to offer a solution. For a premium priced product positioned as ethical, sustainable, and responsible, the level of after-sales support was not consistent with those claims.
While I understand limitations around third-party retailers, VEJA still benefits financially from these sales globally. Consumers paying premium prices reasonably expect basic support, transparency, and access to repair or replacement parts.
This experience highlights a significant gap between VEJA's sustainability branding and the practical reality once something goes wrong with the product.
After just two weeks, the seam at the back of the shoe came apart and half of the VEJA logo had fallen off. When I contacted their customer service, I got a snarky reply claiming the shoes couldn't possibly be only four weeks old based on the photos — they insisted they must be at least a year old. Of course, I provided proof of purchase, but still only received rude replies. Neither the quality nor the customer service lives up to what you'd expect from such expensive shoes. Never again!
I placed an order on
www.veja-store.com online when it arrived it came with an additional bill of 71$ on top of the shoes. So i contacted customer service and asked to return the item because i didn't anticipated the additional cost. They were Rude and unaccommodating and blamed me for not going thru their FAQ fine print notices and said that they will charge me a return fee. Why the misleading fine print when they can simply advise international clients at the checkout process.
VEJA shoes are very expensive but they are not produced to last. We bought the shoes for my daughter in April 2022 and by December 2022 the sole of the shoe had cracked and water seeped in. My daughter is neither a marathon runner nor a jogger, so the use of the shoes was of the ordinary type (casual walking around) but Veja warranty is for 6 months. These shoes seem to be produced to last the 6-months of warranty. Our recommendation: buy your expensive shoes at the competitors.
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After asking to talk to a manager, I received an email that explained that I could return the shoes to the store by shipping them at my own cost. I had to send pictures of the shoes to prove that they were in original condition and send them the tracking number. We promptly received our refund once we shipped the shoes. The resolution was good, it just took a lot more work to get there than it should have.
Veja has only one store in the United States - New York City. During a vacation in NYC we went shopping and we bought a pair of shoes at Veja (after waiting in line for over an hour to get into the store). After returning home, we decided to return the shoes so I contacted customer support to get a return authorization number. I was told that they only accept returns for items bought in the store at the store where they were purchased - no option to return them via mail even though they have an online store and I offered to pay for the shipping. After a few emails back and forth, I now have a pair of Veja shoes I do not want with no way of returning them.
At the beginning of the COVID lockdown, in April, I ordered a pair of shoes that didn't fit so I sent them back. I then spent the next six months dealing with their terrible email-only customer service attempting to get my refund. To be fair to them, I didn't have the mail tracking number any more but it seemed ridiculous to me that they had no way of tracking the shoes based on the order number. In the end I didn't get the refund, but my main complaint is how incompetent the customer service was. I had to explain the situation at least five times, and never got to speak to anyone with authority as they don't even have a customer service phone number.
