Prettylittlething - anyone else FUMING?

[sowhatimangry]

My dd shops online. She frequently uses Prettylittlething, boohoo, asos. She got an email last week (along with hundreds of thousands of other people, it would appear) saying that her account was being deactivated because she returns too many items.

While I think there's a whole host of things unfair with that, my main issue is that for birthdays and Christmas, family members buy her vouchers for this clothing brand. Meaning she's got £80 as her account balance that she can't use.

The account won't let her place any orders so she can't spend it, she's gotten in touch with the customer service who haven't replied (presuming they're swamped with complaints!)

Is there anything we can do?! There's no option to cash out, and get the money back. They have essentially stolen £80 from her. So so frustrating. Maybe we just have to cut our losses and be grateful it wasn't more.

You must understand that there are hardly any stores though.

My city centre is a ghost town since the pandemic. They all operate online. So consumers are stuffed both ways.

If they have an online model, they should have margins for significant returns. I usually have to send for 3 sizes to get the correct size. That’s not including trousers where l am usually a L but sometimes a regular. Am l supposed to send for them all individually and pay postage on them all?

Exactly this! This is an idea time for some education on how awful fast fashion is. And how bad for the environment excess return are. goodonyou.eco/how-ethical-is-prettylittlething/

The irony of a fast fashion brand screwing over their customers just like they do with their suppliers and underpaid overworked employees. Teach your daughter to not be wasteful shopping these dreadful companies and to buy sustainably going forward.

Trying things on doesn’t really take things out of circulation.

Every single thing is tracked and barcoded. And there is margin for ‘trying things on’

Also if people can’t try things on they won’t buy them? So they have to allow for it.

Like PLT is ethical!😂

As PPs have said, it's a shitty company that produces shitty clothes in shitty conditions...shitty customer service should come as no surprise. Anything that highlights how awful these firms are and puts them out of business is good...although it cam be very hard to avoid fast fashion these days. Some companies brand themselves as ethical and high quality but use the exact same factories and just charge shedloads more. It is a minefield.

But on the topic, I am surprised that it's legal. I'm not an expert, but I believe there are laws enabling you to return goods within 14 days if you bought them online because you can't see, handle or try them until you receive them (it's different for resellers). Seems dodgy...however crap it is to keep sending things back, I don't see why, from a consumer rights perspective, it shouldn't be allowed if the clothes are unworn.

For example, I need some new shorts. I find five pairs I like the look of online, but I'm not sure if the 14 or 16 will fit so I'll order both to try them.
Then they arrive and the fabric feels different from what it looked like in the photo, so they're getting returned. Another pair the colour doesn't look right when I see them up close. A couple of pairs don't fit properly. And another couple just don't suit me like they do the model online.

I genuinely thought this was the reason retailers offered free returns. I only order where free returns are available because you never know what a product is going to look like up close, from a staged photo online.

Big company behaves in a manner that will effectively scam a young girl out of her money if they don't fix it, and the mumsnet hivemind choose to attack the young girl?

The sad thing is you're not even paid shills. Just awful people.

But the reason why their sizes are all over the place is they go for the cheapest model to produce, instead of having long term contracts with their manufacturers for a few years and having their sizing perfected with them they instead move around to each manufacturer to who can get it done the cheapest and quickest. Dont forget using extra cheap material being used to make the material. Nothing is good about that company, watch the documentary Channel 4 did a few years ago, one scene they had offering the latest love island winner 500k contract then another scene the buyers fighting with a manufacture to get 50p off a dress, then even worse later on when time for vendors to be paid, forcing them to take another 10 per cent off before they pay them, Like the manufactures had produced the sock it had been delivered, staff had to be paid etc. It was horrific and so shameful
I would use this opportunity as a wake up call, take a look at how buying clothes, educate yourselves on how companies operate how clothes are made. You can still have a love of fashion, buy clothes etc but be a better consumer

They can close it if they like but you ought to get a warning, so the vouchers can be spent within a timeframe.

Taking your vouchers is blatant theft

How on earth is it greed?

If they are returning them, they aren’t greedy enough to keep them.

I personally don’t buy clothing from PLT, but I wouldn’t judge people who do. Different people have different budgets. Younger people are more likely to use places like PLT, and get ripped off by them.

PLT’s behaviour is pretty disgraceful, especially since their customer base is mostly young impressionable women. It’s very shady the way they operate. I think the way the business is run in general is shocking and without documentaries like the one you mentioned, people wouldn’t have a clue how bad these companies can be.

Most companies move their production around.

Zara have a vertical model and to some extent M and S. But they are the only ones who have their own production.

And sizing changes according to fabric and style. I worked in the rag trade for years.

I hope everyone gets their money back and never orders anything again.

Companies like this don't deserve anyone's time of day let alone their money.

And sizing is in the shitter everywhere! We've never had more choice and ease of buying, and there's never been more dross!

Greedy is just an insult thrown at women for not living a passive dainty existence.

There is no way I would let them steal £80. Id email consumer affairs again explaining that if they are swamped with complaints that is because presumably they’ve just committed large scale theft and their many many victims are unhappy, so you don’t see that being swamped excuses them in any way. Say if you don’t hear back in a week how to get the £80 back then you will go to consumer affairs and Martin Lewis, as if several hundred equally pissed off plt consumers haven’t already contacted him you’re sure they will once they realise you’re not replying.

and then do that.

All fast fashion companies do - thats how they keep costs down - ZARA and M&S are classed as fast fashion. Other companies don't they have full supply chain visibility available online etc. They have longer contracts with manufactures and some have used them for years

I also find it understandable to want to buy several sizes from any shop but especially PLT, the sizing can be really off. It makes more sense to buy two sizes at once and return one than having to do two or three separate orders in a row. They have set themself up for this behaviour with good delivery and return policies, cheap prices and sales that make it “easy” for people to buy a new outfit each weekend and the emphasis on trends and fast fashion. If people are doing “too many” returns, they should take a look at sizing and quality to ask themselves why

There are two issues here:

One is that PLT, Boohoo, Shein et al are pretty awful companies. Cheap clothing produced on questionable (at best) labour practices, opaque supply chains with the risk of exploitation and that's before we get to the environmental impact of the methods of production and the waste produced by clothing that is practically designed to go into landfill.

It's hardly surprising that a company with shonky practices the rest of the time also has shonky customer service.

However.

The online selling model seems to assume that you will buy to try on. You can't look at the fabric, see what the colour looks like in reality or gauge the item against yourself (i.e. for length) as you would in the shop. Throw in wildly variable sizing (also a feature of cheap clothing) and it's hardly surprising that trying on three dresses meaning to choose one could mean 6 or even 9 items ordered with all but one returned.

How many times do you look for something in a store only to be told to "try online - we don't hold all lines/sizes in the store"? So you shop online to try stuff on because you couldn't do it in the shop.

The shops can't have it both ways but PLT are trying to. PLT and the like seem to have actively promoted over-consumption and now they're complaining that there's a side-effect to that which they don't like.

Yeah but Zara own their own factories.

The majority of retailers contract stuff out to different factories that they change when they want.

I am not judging but we are all educated people and have information available to us freely. Everyone knows that fast fashion is damaging to the climate but yet they still buy. Thats where i judge. They know these companies operate in a shocking way. If on a budget there are options to buy in charity shops, vinted, deopob ebay etc. Currently around 52 million zara items on Vinted at the mo and yet zara still churning out more badly produced, terrible sizing clothing

They know exactly why! They're not going to take a look at anything except the profit margins. The only answer is to stop buying from places like this, but they are such a behemoth now, I don't think we can ever put the genie back into the bottle. They are everywhere, even places that aren't marketed as fast fashion. Unless you shop only in dedicated ethical places that you have checked out (like in goodonyou), it's almost impossible to avoid. And such places are priced accordingly, which is extra shocking in the day of £10 dresses.

It's so shit. As ever it hits people without much disposable income the hardest and I don't want to berate a person who is financially struggling for taking the obvious and, for them, best solution. I hope Vinted can change things but not everyone wants second hand, some sellers are crap and I think it's only a matter of time before the dropshippers descend there too.

No but it does require them to pay for shops staff and premises instead. I can’t believe it costs them more to run the warehouse and returns model.

I do like this SNL sketch (parodies PLT and other Chinese clothing behemoths): https://x.com/DLVermeer/status/1792542441196618077?t=H25E_ByZXZIQzgDFSfl07A&s=19