California Apparel News

A Lawrence, N.Y.-based Web site called urbanQ.com has created an online stir by offering much of its large collection of moderate fashion apparel (for women, men and children) for free. As crazy as it sounds, most garments from urbanQ.com are absolutely freehellip;after “Q-bate.” So what’s a Q-bate, you ask? The answer seems simple enough—by now you’ve taken the bait—until you read the fine print.

We do not have the space to publish the dozens of details outlined on the site regarding the Q-bate, but we can tell you that it involves mailing back garment tags, quoting order numbers, filling out forms and transferring information onto the envelope(s) in which you mail your Q-bate request(s). (No combining of requests into one envelope is allowed.)

Our conclusion—the Q-bate system is an arcane one intended to fail, either by frustrating consumers with a paper-shuffling mess to the point where they won’t bother making their claim(s), or as a result of the company disallowing the request(s) due to any number of errors that are bound to occur.

It’s clear to us that urbanQ.com’s profitability depends outright on denying the very Q-bate requests it so aggressively encourages customers to make.

To confirm our theory, we tested it. Back in November 2000, our consumer, “Zelda,” ordered three children’s garments as holiday gifts. The prices were not heavily discounted, but the price points aren’t important when you’re getting a full Q-bate back on them, right? You can take your Q-bate as a check made out to you (allow “approximately 12 weeks for processing”) or an actual Q-bate credit to use toward more purchases in the future (to be activated “immediately upon processing”). The garments arrived promptly and in good condition. Reasonably well-made imports from China. No problem.

Now the Q-bate nonsense had to be done. One form was included with the order, but the instructions demand that a separate form be used for each garment—everyone has a copier at home, right? So we filled out most of the same stuff three times, but entered different product numbers. Then we entered the Q-bate code—which must be written in the lower left outside front corner of each envelope (which we had to supply). And we had to check back in on the site regarding our account too.

Well, after many e-mail inquiries back to urbanQ.com about our Q-bate, the company has yet to credit Zelda’s account and recently reported that the returned requests did not have the appropriate codes on the outsides of the envelopes. Now, we were meticulous about our entries, but operating like the average consumer, we did not make copies of the envelopes.

Our Zelda complained and complained (probably well beyond what the typical customer would) and finally got the promise of a settlement. The latest e-mail (dated June 7) reads: “You will be receiving a Q-bate check. Please allow several weeks for your checks to be sent to you. Being that these rebates were initially denied, the process of retrieving all of the necessary documents, submitting them to our processing department and allowing the rebates to be re-processed will take several [more] weeks.”

hellip;We’ll let you know when the check arriveshellip;.

UrbanQ.com has broken new ground in customer disservice. More important, it may have undercut the credibility of the many online apparel e-tailers who do an ethical and efficient job of selling their wares. Caveat emptor.

For Apparel Manufacturershellip;

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