Bates' Tora Bora Alpine Boots are CRAP!

I just bought a pair of Tora Bora boots (over $300 a pair!) through Cat 5 Commerce and was shocked at how poorly made they were. Just out of the package, I pulled up on the laces and the eyes holding the laces in simply fell apart. It turns out they were all made of very thin pieces of plastic like on a child's watch-band. I called the company and the manufacturer and both insisted that I had the actual boot and not an imitation. They then told me they'd send me a shipping label--which never showed up. I'd have lost over $300 if I hadn't check my email today and realized that they simply sent me an address a couple weeks back, insisting that I pay to ship them back within a month. The workmanship on the boot is so poor that selling such a product as if it were a top-end high-quality product essentially amounts to fraud. If anybody out there is considering buying from any of these sleazy merchants, please reconsider.

The crooks:
• Bates footware
  
• Cat 5 Shoes
  
• MilitaryBoots.com

(I also don't understand why it takes four or five vendors to sell a pair of boots. With so many middlemen to pay off, no wonder the quality's so poor.)