I doubt that they put polish on the boots. They were brand-new, and to my eye, they didn't look any different shine-wise than when I dropped them off. But it might not hurt to contact the cobbler before I call the company, just to be sure. And maybe the cobbler can even offer an explanation, having so much experience with leather boots.
Reducing the calf size in boots is probably a moderately difficult job. My usual shoe guy, who is really stellar, told me he doesn't do that work because it's too time consuming. So I went to a new place, a place that advertised itself as a leather repair shop. The charge was US$70, which I think is reasonable for that kind of work. I had another cobbler reduce the calf on a previous pair of boots, and he charged me only US$45, but he also took 2.5 months to do the boots. He took shortcuts (which he told me about beforehand) too. I realized during that experience that it was quite a labor-intensive job. So I didn't think $70 was too much to pay. The work itself was pretty good--everything seemed straight--except for the fact that their machine skips stitches, and the gal at the front desk when I picked them up had to go over some of the stitches for me to even things out. I think the boots are actually a little tight now, but since they are leather, I'm hoping they will loosen up. I've never had a problem with tight calves on boots before, ha ha!
You can't get every pair of boots reduced in the calf, so make sure that whatever pair you buy can be returned in case it can't be done. This is the reason I went to the $45 cobbler for my previous pair of boots--he was the only one who would work with those boots, since they couldn't be reduced in the calf without a lot of hassle. That is why he had to do a shortcut, which was basically taking out the excess only from the zipper side of the boot and assuming that the back seam would still stay straight when the boot was zipped back up, "poufing" out the extra leather on the outside of the boot instead of at the back. (It's hard to explain without showing it to you, and I can't post pictures yet.) One of the reasons that the previous pair of boots was so hard to work with was they had a lining in the inside of the boot that covered all the seams, so he would have had to rip out the whole lining. With the LC pair I just got, the lining and the outer leather both had visible seams.
