I've been a customer of Vans for a year or so and my experience of this brand has been generally very good. The only downside is that their prices are high i my experience compared to other retailers of similar shoes. Despite this, I would recommend all lovers of fun shoes to own at least one pair. The main reason for this is that everything apart from the price is upside in my experience (reliable quality, good choice of colours and styles, fun colours, designs and special editions that you can't get anywhere else). The best thing about this brand are the special editions they do with makers of cartoons. One cool thing about these special edition Vans is that if you keep the special editions nice and keep the original box, they tend to have good resale value into the future. I've never used a discount for Vans, shopped the sales for some or paid for delivery of these shoes so I can't speak about these things. However, my experience as far as this goes (mostly shopping in-store) has been very good in the main. The reason I'm taking off one star is for the high prices but other than that, great. 4 stars.