BABY fails again; customer service and product review

[amethystcitrine.livejournal.com]

You know the saying: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me!” It applies here.



You may remember my BtSSB shoe review last year, and the hilarious follow-up in which Baby threatened to sue me.

Well, apparently a year was enough for me to forgive, forget, and cave in for their Fairy Tales Pochette. My friend kiwi_lady also wanted the bag, so she agreed to buy our bags using her e-mail address; we paid promptly, and received the bags very quickly in the mail.

Unfortunately, right out of the box they were both quite defective, specifically the chain strap, as you can see in the following pictures:


Here on the right you can see where they took two cords, and glued them together for the strap…but the glue came undone (probably from heat) and thus, the strap is falling apart already.


I guess I have excellent bad luck.

And so, kiwi_lady was brave enough to e-mail Baby and report these problems, emphasizing the time and date of each phase of the transaction, citing Baby’s policy for complaints, and providing the pictures that show what was received (in as polite a tone as possible, of course).

Two days later, Baby replied:

“Thank you for your inquiry.
Please stretch the chain.
It’s not the defective item.”

Problem: the chains are the cheap kind you might find at a Hobby Lobby; very malleable and easily broken. We did attempt to gently persuade the cords and chain links into their proper place, but the cord would not budge. Out of fear of further damaging what we might be stuck with, we decided to leave these bags alone.

I called the Baby store in San Francisco in hopes that they might be able to help me, but while they were very cordial and kind, I was told that Baby did not appreciate international orders being mediated through the US location.

kiwi_lady replied to Baby’s terse e-mail with a firmer message, requesting a 15% partial refund to take care of repair costs, or that new chains be sent to replace the faulty ones we received, to which Baby responded with:

“Dear __________

Thank you for your reply. We have never received the same claim until now.
Unfortunately, we cannot accept your demand.
When the items are inferior items, we respond to exchange or we respond to refund.
However, it is not inferior item and we are unable to take the responsibility in the case of changing
the specification of items at your hope.

Thank you.”

So, like a year ago, Baby refuses to acknowledge that anything could possibly be wrong with their products, and because (supposedly) no one else submitted a similar complaint, we must be lying or too dumb to handle a purse. Never mind the fact that when one spends nearly $250 to buy a brand new item directly from a brand, one expects not to have to fix that item right out of the box.

EDIT:
kiwi_lady, my friend who handled the transaction with Baby, wanted to make a comment based on the responses to this post:

As the person who received the bags first-hand, I would like to make some additional comments.

1st: The problem with the blue strap turned out to be that the leather strap was inserted wrong in the first place, so it made a double loop in the middle.
2nd: The blue strap was too long for the amount of chain given, so it was bound to tangle up much more easily than a strap/chain that was cut to the correct length.
3rd: With the black strap, the strap was splitting in the middle as you can see as well as it being tangled up, but that I can live with.

Now here are my concerns,

1st: As some of you mentioned, it may just have been that the chains were "jostled" up. However, as a retail company that does cater to the international community, they should've foreseen this problem and packed the chain better in a matter which it would not have tangled up so badly that it took me 2-3 hours undoing/fixing them. Ameythst and I spent nearly half a grand paying for these bags, and DIYing to this degree should have not been necessary. This is negligence on Baby's part.

2nd: Though the majority of the problem may seem like due to poor handling, there were genuine defects to the strap that also affected the quality of the bag, such as the length of the blue strap and the splitting of the black strap. Knowing the usual brand quality, I can understand the weak binding of the strap (it also would've not affected the usage of the bag that greatly, as I can just insert that part back into the chain and not agitate the problem). However, the length of the blue strap made it much easier for the chain to tangle up and twist, making it more difficult to use and maintain the bag.

3rd: The apathetic response Baby gave to my inquiry and concern is unacceptable, even in Asian standard. I have dealt with other brands and the limitation of their English. However, that did not prevent these brands to come off of as genuine and courteous should any problems arise. Though some of you claim cultural difference (and I do understand that) their behaviour mirrors more of a street vendor than high-end retail that they present themselves to be.

Note,
I do own other chain strap bags, and none of them had a tangling problem this bad, nor did they come with the kind of sub-par quality that these AATP bags have shown. Even considering and acknowledging the low quality brands usually carry compared to their prices, the attitude to which Baby will not own up to the fault on their end (which I mainly blame on their handling department and partially their manufacturer) has soiled my impression of them. This is not the first time I had a problem with a brand good (ie, Metamorphose). However unlike Baby, the interaction was pleasant enough and it led to many future businesses with the said brand. To me, this experience just showed that Baby runs more like a shady Taobao business than a well respected brand that represents Lolita fashion to the world.