Bad news in Boston

I want to take a moment to let you all know about a company I am choosing never to do business with again, the clothier Boston Proper.

If you're not familiar with their line, Boston Proper makes a lot of things that only look good on the models. Their target demographic falls in the range of 35-55 years of age and is "college educated, owns her own home, and her average household income is $100,000 ... She's savvy, works, travels a lot, and is active; she wants to find clothes quickly and efficiently when she's shopping" (excerpted from http://www.retail-merchandiser.com/retail-reports/1064-boston-proper-know-your-brand.html). Clearly, I am not their target, though I do tend toward stores that cater to people older than 30 (for example, I love Eddie Bauer... then again, I also love Maurices, and that's geared toward 20-somethings. I wish Maurices was my closet.). Seriously, though, go take a look at the clothes on their website and tell me if you want to see your Mom wearing any of them (no offense, Mom).

Take this dress, for example. My Mom would never wear this. Your Mom would never wear this. It only hits their target age of 47 because Boston Proper caters to Mrs. Robinson. Oh, hey, that lady's on hubby's yacht in her clingy dress and totally impractical heels!

So, here's my real beef with Boston Proper. Their customer service sucks. About a week ago, I found a shirt in the clearance section for $19.99 (a steal compared to the rest of their items, which could set you back $129 dollars for a freakin' tank top). They had it in my size and the color I wanted, so I added it to my cart, clicked to check out, and got to the payment page. At the bottom of the page, it showed the item as "In Stock and Reserved!" I got up to get my wallet, came back, entered my credit card number, clicked "submit order", and....... the item was sold out. If it's in "in stock and reserved", how in God's holy name did it sell out? It's like going shopping at Christmastime, grabbing the last shirt off the rack, and having someone snatch it out of your cart while you're waiting to check out.

I sent Boston Proper an @reply on Twitter saying "I tried to place an order yesterday and the items "reserved" in my cart "sold out" when I clicked the submit order button. :(" to which they replied "We're sorry! Please DM us your name/email & we'll see if there's anything we can do." I sent them a direct message shortly after I received that reply, but they never got back to me on Twitter or via email. That's fine, I thought. They probably wouldn't do anything anyway. I contacted them later to say I had never received a response, to which they did not respond. The shirt I had previously tried to order mysteriously showed up in the clearance section again. I tried to order it again and it said, "This item is backordered 30 days." Fine, fine. I click through to the order screen and once again it tells me the item is sold out. *head explodes*

I then sent @boston_proper the following messages:
"It happened again. Tried to order http://bit.ly/lpOA2l & it said it was on back order. Then, it disappeared from my cart!" (12:12 PM Apr 28th via web)
"Now, it shows that shirt is "No longer available for purchase". It seems to mysteriously flip-flop from available to not." (12:13 PM Apr 28th via web)
"Since no one will bother responding to my comments, I think it would be wise of me to take my business elsewhere." (12:15 PM Apr 28th via web)

Never heard a word from them.

Nevertheless, I did end up ordering this shirt because I found the secret $20-off code (*cough*S1PC142*cough*) that brought the price plus shipping down to a reasonable $27. And if it doesn't fit, I'll sell it on eBay. No harm in that, right? NB: the aforementioned code only works once per mailing address/name/lifetime, and if you try to use it more times, you will get a personalized email from Boston Proper advising you not to do that, mmmkay.