By Honker

In early November, 2010, I purchased two 18 month size puffer jackets from the Children’s Place for my twins to wear for the winter. In March, I noticed that there was a large void in the back of the coat; all of the stuffing was gone. Finding that strange, I examined the other puffer coat and found the same thing had happened. The care instructions for the coats state to machine wash and dry. We followed the care instructions, and yet all of the stuffing shifted within the coat, leaving my twins backs exposed to the winter for an unknown period of time prior to discovery of the problem.

I brought the coats in to the location where I had purchased them at the end of March, as soon as possible after I discovered the problem. I didn’t have the receipts with me, and I am not able to find them, but I thought that the store manager would recognize that the colours were those of the most recent season. She did recognize them, and stated that she had never seen that happen to the puffer jackets in her 6 years of working for the company. Both of the coats had the same defect, although they came from different lots since they were different colours, so this was definitely a quality issue and not a fluke. This kind of defect is unacceptable in a winter coat!

The manager said that without the receipts, the best that she could do would be to give me a refund for $5.99, the price that the coats are now being sold for! I indicated that $5.99 was not acceptable, but that I would be happy to exchange the coats. She stated that she no longer had any of the coats left and no store in Ottawa did. I was outraged at the idea of a refund in the amount of $5.99.

Although I do not have the receipt for these coats, $5.99 is an unreasonable and unacceptable refund for a defective winter coat that cost between $30 and $40. Furthermore, winter coats from a quality store like yours should not be disposable, no longer useable after less than one season of wear. I don’t think that your return and exchange policy on your website would hold in this situation. I feel that a reasonable resolution would be either a refund for the two coats for the price that they were sold for in early November 2010, or a store credit in that amount. I would happily return the coats for your examination to determine what the defects were to prevent them from recurring in next year’s coats.

So I wrote to the Children’s Place on May 1st, including essentially the same information contained above. To date, I have not had the courtesy of any kind of reply whatsoever.

Moral of the story: BEWARE of the abysmal quality and total lack of customer service at the Children’s Place.