Terrible customer service from this site. I expected more from Armani Exchange.
Written: Jul 02 '09
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I am an avid online shopper and I watch promotions and use coupon codes religiously. Recently, there was a decent deal at the Armani Exchange Online Store so I decided to get my husband a polo shirt from them. The site is very unprofessional and I will not ever attempt to make an order with them again.
What Armani Exchange Online Store Sells
The site sells men's and women's Armani clothing and accessories. These are mid to high priced designer items at mid to high high priced designer prices.
Navigation, Shipping, and Returns
I found the site to be slow. I had trouble navigating around and pages took time to load. They have some high tech features on the site which could be why the site seems slower than many others. Navigation, though, is fairly straight forward. You can shop for women's items or men's items and they are broken down into many categories.
The photos are decent and descriptions are adequate. There are several ways to search and sort items and adding to your cart is simple. I found that adding to my cart was slow and the site timed out a few times but I believe that is because they were having a sale that actually turned into a bigger sale than they anticipated. I will explain that later.
Checkout is the typical one. You give your details and choose a password to make an account. You pay by major credit card. Shipping is $6.00 for orders under $100.00 and free for orders over that amount in the US. Sales tax is applied to the orders being shipped to the following states: <a>California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Texas, Virginia, Washington DC and Washington.
The site indictes that returns are free yet there is nothing in their written policy to back that up. They will refund your purchase price minus shipping and handling fees within 30 days. They also accept exchanges but again, they don't say whether they charge to send out the exchanges. I didn't get that far so I suggest that you write and ask what their actual policy is if you think you may have to return something. You can return online purchases to their brick and mortar stores with a receipt.
My Experience
I saw that Armani Exchange Online Store was having a sale on polo shirts. They were taking $10.00 off all styles. That wasn't really great considering the high prices that the polos sell for but I saw that others were reporting that the site was actually taking $20.00 off the polos. Being the thrifty shopper I am, I went to see what the deal was.
I looked around and found a nice green polo shirt in my husband's size and put it in my cart. Sure enough, the site automatically discounted $20.00 from the $48.00 original price (That was the cheapest shirt I could find!). Happy with that, I also used a free shipping on any order code which the site accepted. I paid and got a confirmation email.
The funds were immediately taken from my credit card so I sat back and waited for my shipping email. After several days, I finally emailed the site asking if they were going to ship the polo out soon as Father's Day was approaching. I then received an email saying that my order was out of stock and canceled. WHAT?? They just suddenly realized that after I wrote?
I wrote them back saying that I was charged and that I wanted the item I purchased. I was aware that that the promotion applied twice but that had nothing to do with me. The site automatically applied the discount without the use of any type of external code.
They wrote that that would refund me and never addressed my assertion that they canceled my order because their site gave an extra $10.00 discount. I wouldn't have even really been upset if they had written to me saying the site was wonky and applied the discount twice and that the actual price was $38.00. That is what I expected anyway. But they simply chose to completely ignore the situation and hope I never discovered they didn't send my order out!
They don't communicate with their consumers, they're rude, they don't live up to the prices that their site charges and they took my money and I have NO idea if they would have refunded it if I hadn't written them and informed them that I wanted the shirt I ordered.
I did eventually get that refund but I wanted the shirt I paid for. The site that day was SO slow that it timed out many times and caused tons of delays when I tried to buy a simple polo shirt. That may have been because people caught on to the fact that site was taking $20.00 off polo shirts instead of $10.00 but, really, that is no reason to flock to Armani Exchange Online Store. Even with that discount, the polos are outrageously priced and not very good looking.
At any rate, had the site dealt with my order by sending it or at least emailing me about the situation and adjusting the price, I would have been satisfied. Instead, they just tossed my business aside and, as a first time shopper, made me never want to go back to buy anything again. And I won't.
Conclusion
Armani Exchange Online Store is pricey and their quality is ehhh. You pay for the name as in the case of many name brands. Their shipping fees are reasonable and it SEEMS like their returns policy is decent. It's quite cryptic. But these people don't communicate at all with their customers and they don't adhere to their own website's pricing. They charge immediately yet don't send the orders out, at least not in my case. They wait for the consumer to inquire after many days as to when the order will ship and then they say "Oops, we're out of stock." Maybe that isn't how the Armani Exchange Online Store usually does business but I, for one, will never go back to the site and I give it 1 lonely star. There are so many sites out there for quality clothing and GOOD customer service. Why bother going to Armani Exchange Online Store?
Recommended:
No
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