Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Stitch Fix: The Styles We Feel Like Sending You, Delivered


In the interest of completeness, I thought I should post what I sent to them and what they ultimately said to me about the "fix" that they sent me. Short Version: They refunded my styling fee and deleted my account.

Shorter Version: "Don't go away mad, just go away."

Really Long Version

My friend who got me interested in this thought I should let Stitch Fix know that I was unhappy and why. Failing that, she thought I should shame them on Twitter. I didn't really think they'd care, but other people had blogged that they had had really awful fixes and that after they emailed Stitch Fix people from the top of the company sent them them apologetic emails and new fixes that were much better. It seemed worthwhile to try. Here's what I wrote to them on July 31st:

Dear Stitch Fix,
I have been debating since June as to whether I should contact you about this or not. I don't know if anyone there actually will read this or if it will matter, but I figure there's no way you can try to make this better if I don't say anything to you.

I received my first and only "fix" in the mail on June 12th. I don't recall who my "stylist" was, but I'm sure you can look that up using my email address. My first fix was absolutely horrible. 

All of the clothes were huge on me, and the colors were absolutely awful. After I tried everything on, I cried because it was just all so ugly. I took pictures and made a blog post, and I want you to see it because I don't think words can describe how awful these clothes were or how awful they looked on me. Click here and look: http://knitlaw.blogspot.com/2013/06/in-which-i-am-badly-dressed.html. I'll wait. I want you to read it and I want you to look at those pictures and tell me that someone there read my style profile before that happened.  Also, take a look at my Pinterest Style board and explain to me how someone got those clothes and styles from this: http://pinterest.com/waterlylly/style/

I had tried to use the style profile to make sure it was clear what kind of body type and shape I have  and what kind of things I like, and also give you vital information like my height and weight. I had also given the link to my Style page on Pinterest. It was like the stylist didn't even read the profile or look at the page. She definitely did not read the height and weight portion of the information, from the looks of things. By the time I was done with trying these things on, I felt like I had spent the day
trying on swimsuits built for elephants. I felt horrible and weird-shaped and sad. I can't believe that that's how you want your customers to feel when they receive these boxes of clothes from you.


Part of me wants to give you another chance because I'm a busy person and I don't have a lot of time for things like shopping. I really thought your service was going to improve my life. Part of me also just wants to give up on you and ask if it's possible that you can refund the styling fee and just delete my account because I don't think I can deal with another box of awful clothes that don't fit and that are every kind of wrong for my color and style.

So, help me out here. What went wrong? Why did this happen? And can you do anything to make this better, or should I just delete my account?

On August 3rd, with no contact from them whatsoever, I received an email asking how my customer service experience was. I was kind of puzzled by this, so I logged into the customer service system there and found that they had declared my issue "Solved." Wait, what?

So yesterday I replied in their system to re-open the ticket: "Seriously? "Solved"? I don't even get a "Sorry you felt that way" email? This issue isn't solved. It wasn't even addressed. What kind of customer service is this?"

At this point I was pissed off, so I also took my friend's advice and applied a little Twitter Shame: " My horrible fix documented here:. Emailed Stich Fix, no contact, issue marked Solved. This is Not Solved."

That must have got someone's attention, because soon after that I received this from them:

"We're terribly sorry for the delayed response and for your disappointing experience with Stitch Fix. After much deliberation, we have come to the conclusion that we are not confident we will be able to meet your styles needs. We are still a small company in beta and unfortunately, we are limited on how many different style preferences we are able to accommodate based on our inventory. We do sincerely apologize we missed the mark on styling you. We have refunded your styling fee, you will see the credit within 3-5 days and have deactivated your account. 

Please let me know if you have additional questions. 

For more information about Stitch Fix please check out our FAQ https://stitchfix.com/faq
xo,
Jacqueline Greenberg
www.StitchFix.com
Your Style. Delivered."


Translation: "We hoped you would go away if we ignored you. It's too bad you didn't like anything we sent you, but really we only want to style people who are easy to please since we don't have much in the way of choice here. That whole "personal style" thing is actually not true, so if you don't like what we sent everyone else this month we don't want to deal with you. Here's your money back. Go away now and stop talking about us, okay?"

So, on the plus side, they refunded my $20. On the minus side, no mention of "If we had sent you anything that fit it might have worked better." If what they have in inventory is so limited, I have to wonder if they just send every person who's getting a fix the same selection of stuff. I don't think there's any personalization going on here at all. The people who are really happy with their service are probably people who have very common sizes and who are happy to wear anything that fits.

I'm unhappy that they just brushed me off. I'm not pleased that they made no effort to try again or get it right. Apparently I'm too weird for them both size and style-wise. Sadly, I should be their target demographic. I frequently don't even know what I should try on at the store, and what I really need is for someone to help me branch out into stuff I might not have even tried on otherwise. They could have made a lot of money off of me if they had just sent me stuff that fit that would have looked good on me. Hell, they could have made a little money off me just sending something that actually fit. Instead they sent me a pile of things that didn't fit at all and blew me off when I called them out on it.

Wrap up: Don't waste your time or money on these people. They are not offering the service they pretend to offer. They're just a subscription service that will send you clothes once a month if you ask them to. No personalization is going on here, and that's too bad. A personal stylist service would be cool.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I had very similar experiences after giving them 3 chances. I now deal with TrunkClub for women. You get to preview the trunk, take stuff out, make different suggestions, and there is no styling fee. Your stylist will also look at your wish list you create at Nordstrom and you sometimes get the exact items from it.