Spiegel Ultimate Outlet----No Bargain In My Book.
Written: Nov 21 '01 (Updated May 04 '02)
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The Bottom Line
If you're looking for a bargain, I'd keep up the search. Beware the shipping charges, return shipping charges and handling fee.
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| Full Review |
I've had an FCNB credit card for some time, and therefore receive catalogs from their clients: Spiegel, Eddie Bauer and Newport News. Just last week I got a Spiegel Ultimate Outlet catalog and I must admit I was interested. For those of you not familiar with Spiegel and their merchandise, they offer typical department store fare including apparel, housewares and jewelry.
I normally find their prices to be extremely high for the same items I can find elsewhere, however being the bargain shopper I am, the title of Ultimate Outlet piqued my interest. Thus with the catalog in hand and a shirt picked out that I was interested in, I headed to the web site to check it out. Hey, maybe there were even more bargains to be had there.
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The Layout-
The Spiegel outlet has a fairly straightforward main page that is relatively easy to navigate. On the main page you will find sections for Fashion and For the Home as well as a store locator. If you enter a merchandise section you can pick a sub-category like mens, or womens and narrow your search there. The items are represented by thumbnail pictures with a small description, and price. You can take a larger view of an item of interest that will give more detailed product information as well as a selection of the available sizes and colors.
Spiegel outlet also some user-friendly things conveniently placed on the home page. You can easily order a catalog, search by item number (from your catalog) or item description (i.e. womens shirts). I also really like sites that offer contact information on the main page without having to hunt all over the place, so I give them good marks for their layout overall.
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Ordering-
Ordering is also quite straightforward as well. Once you've selected and item or items, it's time to check out. First time users will need to set up a user name, password and account with pertinent billing and shipping information. There are really only a few steps to this process.
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Billing-
Spiegel outlet accepts FCNB cards (Spiegel, Eddie Bauer or Newport News) Visa, MC, Discover, AMEX and Optima. They also tell you how to pay by printing out your order and sending in a check if you'd rather.
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Shipping-
Here we come to one area I had to give particularly low marks to. The Outlet offers three shipping choices: Standard, Express and Express Plus. To give you an idea of rates I am going to quote two.
For items up to $20.00 standard shipping is $4.95
For items between $20.01 and $40.00 shipping is $5.95
Express adds $10.00 to these charges and Express plus adds $15.00. The outlet also adds a $2.50 non-refundable handling fee to each order.
Now I'm able to figure out that my bargain t-shirt priced at $11.00 will be $17.95 to ship to me, not a bargain anymore.
Doing a little more poking around on the site also leads me to the distressing return policy, that was the deal breaker on my order.(See below.)
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Returns-
The site brags that you can conveniently make your return in any of 3 ways. They neglect to mention until you read the fine print that you'll pay for each of these methods.
1). Ship back at your expense via the post office.
2). Ship back using a pre-paid post office label and your account will be charged between $4.00-$6.50 (depending on weight) for the convenience.
3). Ship back using a prepaid label for UPS. You'll be charged the same rate as the above,and have to take your package to a UPS drop site or hand to a driver. To have UPS come to your home to pick up will add another $10.00
You will not be refunded shipping unless your item is defective,and in any case you will not get back your $2.50 handling fee.
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With shipping policies and charges like these I could not recommend this site to someone. If you know what you want specifically, and happen upon it at this site, you might well find a bargain. However, if you are browsing and think something looks nice and you might like the color or size if you could just try it on or see it, you will most certainly lose money to do so. I also don't care for the fact that while shopping between Spiegel and the outlet your can't put things in your cart and check out all at once. These are separate sites and you must check out individually.
The selection is also extremely limited. You will most likely only find smaller sizes and a few colors to pick from. To be fair this is an outlet and they are trying to discount and get rid of things, however I had a hard time even finding anything in my size or my husbands.
Lastly, the site does not offer any area to track your order once it's been placed. This is not critical I suppose, yet it's indicative to me of the whole vibe on this site. It's just one more detail you won't see here that you will find elsewhere. You truly feel like you're in a bargain basement when you're shopping the Spiegel Ultimate Outlet.
Thanks for reading!
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About the Author
Location: Washington State
Reviews written: 212
Trusted by: 205 members
About Me: Working on school! Hoping to finish soon.
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