Gilt Can Suck It

I love shopping. I love flash sales. The designer clothes at low prices, the small window of time to buy (I've been known to keep something in my shopping cart for weeks before buying something)... all things I love. Until today, Gilt was my favorite flash sale site. Now I hate it. You see, I bought a pair of sandals that I had passed on in it's first round of flash sales so I jumped at it this time. I thought, if I don't like them or they don't fit, I'll just pay the minimal charge to return them. Apparently my definition of minimal and Gilt's version of minimal are not the same. After seeing my "minimal return charge", I promptly sent them a very angry email, which I'm sure will get read by no one. This is what I wrote:


WOW.   $14.95 to return something that didn't fit me plus $5.95 for initial shipping. That's almost $21 dollars to babysit a pair of shoes for a week that didn't fit. You know what I could buy for $21? A nice dinner out, 21 songs from iTunes, a dozen drinks to make myself forget that I'm basically being robbed by Gilt, or ANYTHING ELSE THAT HAS MORE VALUE THAN THE NOTHING THAT GILT IS GIVING ME. I'm always very hesitant to buy from Gilt because of the initial $5.95 shipping cost but I took a leap of faith to buy a pair of sandals that I had been lusting at for a while. I should have kept my feet (that wear reasonably priced shoes, I might add) on the ground. I understand why you neglect to inform your customers that they have to pay a ridiculous amount of money to return something; Gilt customers would probably spend the entire window of time allotted to the flash sale thinking indignantly, "should I chance it? That's 21 iTunes songs I could get if I don't like this piece of clothing." So maybe I'm projecting but let me lay it out for you; the return policy should be much clearer. It should say something about the ludicrous return charge on the confirmation page BEFORE you buy something. I might have still bought it, but at least I would know what I'm getting myself into. I have returned items in the past but have not felt so blind-sighted as I am now. And to charge me extra for buying something MORE expensive? Are you basing your return policy around our nation's defunct tax bracket system? And my other option is to get Gilt credit so I can exchange it for something else and pay ANOTHER $5.95 for something I might have to return again??! I think I'm going to leave this cycle of abuse while I still can. So  I'm going to pay the $14.95 to get my money back, but don't expect another penny from me.


And yes, I understand and fully acknowledge that this is a #firstworldproblem. Hashtag it all you want, call me out on my girly problems, whatever. IT'S THE PRINCIPLE OF THE THING.