I ordered from these folks last year and had no problems. Frau Kurfess wrote me nice emails, auf English. Luckily, Ich spreche ein bischen Deutsch, so I understood everything. Do yourself a favor and order from this place. However, you'd best be familiar with the product as returns will be economically infeasible. Their "ground" or sea based shipping was slow and took about a month for my order to arrive via Deutsche Post. Go to a Birkenstock/Naot store and try their stuff on and then order from this site. Birks take some time to break in and aren't as comfortable as purported until broken in. I've had both cork-bed and synthetic soles and prefer the synthetic Birki line. I'm a clean dude, but had weird Euro-odor problems with the cork-bed sandals. Perhaps my body chemistry...just a warning. I've never had any kind of smell arise from any other footwear, sandal or otherwise. Birks stateside run about $90-$120 a pair. I think after currency conversion mine came about around $30US. Well worth it!!