Dowdy styling, fake sales, and uneven quality
Written: Jan 03 '10
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Full disclosure: I am a Talbots charge card holder. I have been shopping at Talbots since I was far too young to reasonably do so ("Talbots is for old ladies," my sister would shriek). I should love Talbots and reserve a special place in my heart for their red-tagged whatnot. This is sadly not the case.
The Official Preppy Handbook would no longer have anything to do with them.
Rayon sweaters? Cheaply made shoes? Polyester 'slacks'? Damn.
It is out of date.
The styling used to be "classic," meaning preppy. Now, "classic" seems to mean: dowdy. The colours are dull, the cuts of the clothes rarely flatter, and the styling is uninspired.
Other old stalwarts have made some concessions to the idea that clothes might've changed since 1990. L.L. Bean is offering a "contemporary fit," Lands' End has its "modern fit" and "Canvas" line. Talbots is offering no comparable nod to modernity.
Yawn.
Most of the stuff is just plain boring. I would love a store that knocked out boring stuff if they did an exceptional job, but today's Talbots suffers from such uneven quality that it's not a go-to for basics.
WTF? pricing.
I am on a lot of mailing lists (and Twitter feeds and the like) for stores, and Talbots is far and away the worst offender for fake "sales." Most irritating is their "Now, take an extra 30% off everything in the sale section!" gambit. Sounds great, except they jack the prices in the sale section first. I didn't quite notice the extent of the problem until two years ago, when I kept an eye on the price of a jacket I liked. It bounced all over the place -- $40! $80! $60! And, when I rushed to check it during an "extra 30% off sale" period, it was $50-something...
The fake sales are capital-B Bad and the "regular" prices don't leave much good to be said. I would love a trench coat worth $250. But Talbots doesn't sell trench coats worth $250; it just prices them at $250. The quality of the pricy stuff is rarely worth it.
Horrible very bad awful no good service.
A couple of years ago I returned a sweater. I'd given it as a present only to watch it shrink to absurd proprotions in one cold-water line-dry wash. "Please exchange it for [other sweater]," I wrote, and sent it off. I heard nothing for six weeks, and started to panic about my return getting lost in the mail. Any other company would've sent (1) an acknowledgement of receipt of the sweater, (2) the replacement sweater or an apology for lack of same. When I finally bothered them, they were quite curt: we were out of stock of the other one, no, we don't bother to send out information to that end; we just don't send it.
Subsequent returns went back without an exchange request, and still took a great deal of time to elicit a refund.
Basic inquiries about the status of my 'Talbots Classic Awards' took two months to answer, and ended in a screwing-over for the points in the end. (If there is no fine print for a unique situation, the customer is: wrong.) Wrangling 'service' from Talbots' customer service involves writing to a lot of people who can barely write; it was not a pleasant experience.
Site snags.
The Talbots 'sale' and 'outlet' sections lack the ability to sort by size, so scoring a bargain means clicking through endlessly to find out it's only available in two sizes (available colours: neon mustard, pastel peach). The photographs are often poorly done and do not enlarge or zoom to provide the detail one might like. One is forced to type in the answer to a "security question" with every login, prompting a frisson of 'What on earth does talbots.com think it is?' irritation.
Kwality.
Most notable, I think, is that many things I've ordered from talbots.com's sale sections have arrived quite shopworn. The last thing I bought had half its tag detached and the fabric was more fuzzed than one would like for a theoretically brand-new garment. The store sales tags are still attached, with the handwritten red-pen markdowns. I expect that in a store, but shopworn clothes from a dot com? Not acceptable.
Materials are sometimes poor. Yes, Talbots does wool and cashmere, sometimes well. Yes, Talbots does linen -- often quite well. But Talbots also does some flimsy cotton and some surprisingly overpriced artificial fibres. The shoes have been cheaply made for years.
Here and there I've scored some lovely things -- a couple of linen tunics spring to mind -- so it pains me to distance myself from Talbots, but the dreadful service and unreliable quality makes shopping here too risky a proposition nowadays. Au revoir, old friend.
Recommended:
No
What product did you purchase or try to purchase? Clothes clothes clothes
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About the Author
Member: K.M. Mennie
Reviews written: 387
Trusted by: 402 members
About Me: ZOMGZ! Ten years on this site...!
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