My Kind of Month!

It's my birthday month and time for all those businesses which I support and allow to have my email address to pay up! In other words, I have birthday coupons!

So far:

Chico's: $10 off. What can I say? It's spent already!

DSW: $5 off. No minimum purchase. Expires 8/31. I sense a shoe trip coming on.

Papa Murphy's pizza: free cookie dough with pizza purchase. Expires 8/31. Definitely doable.

Landry's restaurant empire: $25 has been added to my membership card. Expires: 9/15. Very generous, especially considering I have to drive a minimum of 40 miles to find a restaurant in the group.

Chamberlains's Restaurants in Dallas: This is an anniversary offer (August is a BIG month for me). Free creme brulee with dinner purchase. Alas, expires on the anniversary and I don't think we'll make it in.

Surely, there are more to come?

24 Days of Ornaments: Dec the 4th

Reindeer, kangaroos, and cats. That pretty much sums up the animals allowed on the tree, although there are exceptions. Today we feature a cat. Not just any cat, of course. A Chico's cat.

For several years, Chico's stores put up a Christmas tree and hung it with various metal ornaments. Over the years, they became more elaborate and I think I might actually own 75% of the styles. This cat is one of several felines in my possession. My habit got so bad, that I would place them on a copy machine and keep the resultant copy with my November calendar pages so I wouldn't re-buy what I already had. That worked all but once.

This year, Chico's has moved on, having exhausted the ornament idea. But I'm still enjoying my cats. And dogs. Reindeer. Stars. A lady in a car...

Chico's responds

So I sat down and composed an email about the fabric content of the Chico's jeans line and sent it merrily on its cyber-way to customer service. I promptly had an answer which thanked me for my comments.

Maybe if enough of us comment, the answer will be longer next time.

Why my brown jeans fit better than my blue or black

This past summer, my favorite purveyor of clothing, Chico's, brought out a new line of jeans. Called Ultimate Fit and coming in straight leg and boot cut, they were available in an assortment of colors. I was dissatisfied with what I was wearing, bought a pair of straight leg blue denim and fell in love.

So much so that I bought a pair of black ones. And one of brown. And that's where the trouble began. The brown ones, same size and cut, felt better. I attributed it to the dye. Then I purchased what is called 'cairo', a very light brown. They are more comfortable than sweats.

Hmmm... It was time to pull out the fabric tags and sure enough, they were different. The blues and black were 99% cotton and 1% spandex. The brown was 66/33/1, cotton to polyester to spandex. And the cairo were made of 70% cotton and 30% elasterell-P. That's a fancy name for a special polyester.

Well, it works. Now to convince Chico's to put this combo of fibers in all their jeans. Just let me wear the current ones out a bit first, if I can convince myself to not live in cairo.

Beware the hidden underwear

One learns to "layer" in winter and one of my favorite layering pieces is a camisole. It's even recommended in the house since we keep the temps in the below-68 range. That is why one has sweaters. And house shoes.

Layered up, coat, sweater, cami, jeans, socks, other assorted necessaries for public appearances, off I went. At my favorite Chico's, I zeroed in on an item I'd seen in the catalog. That would be the new catalog of spring offerings, but I had a hot coupon in my hand which would reduce its price by half and I was a hunter in search of prey.

There it was on a rack and in my size, something the saleslady was pleased about. I gather it must have been selling like hotcakes. (As an aside, most of the items I gallop in for end up on the sale rack greatly reduced. I was not willing to take the chance with this. And there was the matter of the coupon. Heck--it was sale-priced already!)

But since one can never be absolutely sure of fit, I gathered up another one or two items and found the dressing room. Good-bye coat, off with the sweater, tossed the cami onto the pile. Or so I thought.

The desired item fit beautifully. Of the other two items, one fit, but not beautifully (back to the sale rack with it) and one would make a wonderful addition to my wardrobe. It was even on sale. A coup in less than 10 minutes. Darn, but I'm good! Time to get dressed.

Uh... cami? Not on the coat, under the coat, under the bench, stuck in any of the items I'd tried on, or the sweater I'd hastily pulled off. I had worn one, hadn't I? I just knew I had. I even looked up to the light fixture, hoping to see it dangling there.

No.

About the time I was dressed, the saleslady comes to find me. Was I okay?

Well... I started. She was going to think I was nuts, but I could have sworn I'd worn a camisole. It was black. It was old. It was... as she pointed out when we both stood in the door and studied the dressing room, wedged into the little space on the far side of the bench. She'd spotted it easily. It was obviously a trap for clothing items which wanted to stay at Chico's.

I handed her my ill-gotten gain, clicked the dressing room door closed, and removed my coat, my sweater...

Robed!

Found it--my new winter robe that is. I finally went to Soma, the lingerie division of Chico's, and found winter-weight robes which were not over-sized terry. There were some "velour" type offerings, but I shied away from them. Several of their wrap designs had vestiges of a 1940s movie, complete with affixed belt in the back and lots of fabric in the skirt. They were tempting (and I'd feel oh-so-sophisticated in one), but not practical for my purpose.

So, I've bought my first bamboo cotton robe. It's lightweight, but warm, and is a little bit fuzzy on the inside. It has a zipper. It was so long I had to hem it three inches.

And did I mention it was red?

An extra-medium--that's me!

While I prefer to shop at Chico's, where I know the merchandise and how, with the exception of slacks and jeans*, everything will fit, I occasionally fall under the spell of the mail order catalog. I leaf through them, mark what looks interesting with a fold down to the corner, and try to hide it from my finding it again. But they're persistent, these mail order people, and another one will usually follow on its heels. Sometimes, I succumb.

The results are mixed; I hate sending things back, but I will. However, I have found one rule of thumb: If a Medium size isn't a 10-12, pass it by. This is what a friend calls extra-medium. (I wish I could remember which XM friend said that.)

I can't wear an 8-10. Too small. 12-14: probably too large. As to the single sizes--8, 10, 12, for example--I have to have a real good feel for the item, like, it doesn't have a waistline and the shape could be mainly described as drape.

Shoes are a different matter. I'm a 7. I was a 7 when I was 12, my feet didn't grow after I was pregnant, and I'm still a 7. Good ol' feet. Of course, they're a little XM on the wide side...

*From personal experience, no two pair, identical in cut and manufacturer will ever fit the same. Or, maybe, it's just me.

On a broomstick roll

I have a love of clothes and my overly full closet(s) give testimony to it. I'll blame my mother here (don't we all?). When I was a child, she employed a seamstress who kept us in homemade clothes. Granny Bea was a wonder. Mother also shopped at grocery stores which gave S&H Green Stamps. There was a higher-priced clothing store in town which would take them for part of a purchase price. Our better, Sunday clothes, if you will, came from there.

Then I learned to sew. My sister and I stayed hours in the fabric departments. We could spend a summer month making up our wardrobes for the next school year. In fact, my sister made part of my trousseau.

I took summer home economics classes which consisted of volunteer work and sewing projects. Having stuffed my closet to its limits, I pieced a quilt in a very simple pattern one year. Mother had it quilted and at the moment, it's on my bed. I keep meaning to turn it over and note which piece of fabric came from which garment before I forget. But then it's not going to matter to anyone else but me anyhow.

All of which is the background to why I'm loathe to discard clothing. Just because it's out of style, doesn't mean it won't be back "in", and that's the explanation for why I've kept my broomstick skirts.

I love flow and movement in fabric, particularly in a hemline. Broomstick skirts, for the uninitiated, are horizontal layers of coordinating fabric, each gathered to the other. They are so named because, after washing, they are to be tied around a broomstick so that the wrinkles can set in. (The easy solution to this is to know that not everything has to be washed each time you wear it. The other easy solution are high-temperature rubber bands available in the cooking department. I'd have loved to have linked to them, but I can't find them online. Anyway, band it together, wash, dry.) The skirts were quite popular 10+ years ago. In velveteen or flannel, they were a winter staple, while in lighter fabrics, they worked with sandals all summer. They just fit into the niche which is my weakness for skirts.

And, of course, they went "out".

Guess what's back "in"? Guess who has succumbed to a new black one from Chico's? I'm not naming names, but it's a year-round winner. And it's with its older compatriots in my closet.

It's a shopper's world

I've heard it phrased many different ways the last few weeks: shopper's world; buyer's market; consumer cut-off. Starting with the soaring gasoline prices this summer, the American consumer has been on a roller-coaster ride of harrowing proportions. While our local gas prices only flirted with $4/gal and fell as fast as the September stock market (I paid $1.81 two hours ago), as an area, we, too, have figuratively gathered our skirts about us and decided to hunker down. Personally, my poor customer recovery experience with Chico's (documented in several previous blogs) has meant I've bought only one item since August. One. This from a woman who regularly visited twice a month and is on a first name/personal family issues basis with the sales personnel in one store.

(For the record, I'm still not receiving catalogs or emails from Chico's and only know of all their current bargains because friends email them to me. There are so many of them, it's a bit scary. Have other customers been so ignored?)

So, given the state of retailers, particularly those in the high-end, boutique arena, it wasn't a surprise to receive a gift card from Neiman Marcus for $25. There was an expiration date several weeks hence and all I had to do to cash my little gift was use my NM card for the purchase. They wanted me to come shopping and were willing to pay me to do so.

Twenty eight years ago I followed the advice of establishing my own credit and I chose to do so with an NM card. At the time, it was the only credit card they accepted. When they loosened that tie and began taking others, I put my NM card away. But--I smiled to myself as I fingered the gift card--I knew where it was.

I had read in the Wall Street Journal that NM had taken a large we're-not-buying hit in Sept. I figured that was the reason for the sudden and unprecedented largesse. And it worked. I trotted my little-used card in, picked up an item I had been lusting after (a new perfume) and plunked down the cards. Had they been cashing many of those, I asked the clerk. She nodded, smiled back, and seemed glad that her job was one step farther from being gone.

Now, if I could just get Chico's attention.

Chico's responds

Dated Oct. 4, which was a Saturday and am I ever impressed by that, a letter from Chico's Correspondent Consultant, has now arrived in my snail mail box. And it solves my problems?

Not quite.

I have been added to the "must mail" list. That's snail mail and since I did receive my September catalog, I can now eagerly await the October. The email "blasts" are random. Really? After being on their random-on list for several years, I'm now part of the random-off list just as I stop receiving catalogs, too? Doesn't sound quite right to me.

And, no, I haven't received an email since August. It would seem that if a customer is willing to have emails, then they should, no randomness about it.

The letter went on to tell me which coupon I now have available to me and if I haven't it in hand, how to get proper credit. That's good, except I haven't bought anything in a month.

I'm waiting for an email.

An open letter to Chico's

This is my 300th post, so something of a milestone. I've not written every day but when I started this blog 25 months ago, I don't know that I considered there would eventually be a 300th entry.

And, alas, it is an entry of complaint. Real complaint, not some observation about life that doesn't suit me. A genuine consumer comment of the disgruntled kind.

I am the quintessential Chico's customer. For anyone who doesn't know, Chico's is a "boutique" clothing retailer whose demographic is women over, oh, say, 35, who have disposable income for casual jackets over $100 and tee-shirts and jeans in the $50 and up range. Their styles are comfortable, for the most part washable, and well-made. I've been a customer for over 5 years and essentially shop no where else. My closet is 95% Chico's. I belong to their Passport Club, get 5% off of all purchases and if I order online, it's delivered very quickly with no shipping fee.

So why am I complaining?

When I didn't get my August catalog, the one with the coveted, semi-annual 50% off coupon, when my emails of specials dried up, and the store register showed my account as having no coupons available as well, I called customer service. We reached an accommodation on the 50% coupon. I had emailed customer service about it as well and received an answer 3 days later, noting the phone calls. Fair enough. When my September catalog didn't come and I STILL wasn't receiving emails, I put my fingers to the keyboard and wrote a snail mail letter to headquarters. The next day I received my September catalog, but by that point in the exercise, it was irrelevant and continues to be so.

Why? I wrote that letter three weeks ago and I haven't received an answer. Unconscionable. At the very least, I expected a snail mail reply. At the most, I expected to start getting emails, perhaps as if by magic. I am in receipt of neither.

I am very disappointed with Chico's. Very. And I haven't bought a thing since.