banana republic

Banana Republic Lowers Credit Card Limit From $1000 To $100

Banana Republic Lowers Credit Card Limit From $1000 To $100

It’s no surprise that a popular purveyor of work-suitable vestments suck lowered a reader’s friend’s store credit-card limit, but to go from $1000 to $100, that’s cold, Banana Republic. Danielle writes:

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Highlights From Dealhack

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Highlights From Bargainist

Sweatshop In Queens Produced Clothes For Macy's, the Gap, Banana Republic, Urban Apparel, and Victoria's Secret

Sweatshop In Queens Produced Clothes For Macy's, the Gap, Banana Republic, Urban Apparel, and Victoria's Secret

New York state labor officials are bringing one of their largest cases ever against Jin Shun, a clothing factory in Queens, New York that employed Chinese immigrants. Inspectors say the company

  • cheated its workers out of more than $5 million in pay;
  • instructed workers to lie to state inspectors;
  • required 6 and 7-day workweeks, sometimes for up to 120 days at a time;
  • didn’t pay overtime or minimum wage;
  • kept two sets of timecards to fake-out inspectors.

Macy’s says they’re “very concerned” about the case and are investigating it, the Gap says they’re cooperating with authorities, and Victoria’s Secret says they have a “zero tolerance policy” for factories that are unwilling to work with them to achieve compliance—all of which makes us wonder whether any of these companies ever investigated the factory personally. (It’s not like it was in some remote part of China.)

Banana Republic Sends You A Mysterious Visa Credit Card After You Opted Out

Banana Republic Sends You A Mysterious Visa Credit Card After You Opted Out

Reader Tim says that Banana Republic sent him a Visa after he opted out of the program and that the card’s mailer was misleading (it looked like a replacement for his regular Banana Republic card, not a new “optional” Visa account) and didn’t disclose important details… like the card’s interest rate.

Banana Republic: Sorry Our Credit Card Website Sucks, Try Not Using It

Banana Republic: Sorry Our Credit Card Website Sucks, Try Not Using It

Reader Maegan wrote Banana Republic to let them know that their credit card website was buggy and annoying to use. She got back a canned response that halfheartedly apologized for the state of their website and recommended that she use another service to pay her bill.

GAP Caught Using Child Labor To Produce "GAP Kids" Clothing

GAP Caught Using Child Labor To Produce "GAP Kids" Clothing

A freelance journalist has caught the GAP using child labor to produce hand embroidered clothing for its GAP Kids line. The children, who are as young as 10, are quoted as saying they were sold to the factory by their families and cannot leave until their debt is paid. A video of the factory’s squalid conditions shows GAP Kids labels on the clothing.

Why Do You Hate The Gap? The Gap Responds To Your Complaints

Why Do You Hate The Gap? The Gap Responds To Your Complaints

Mike Antonucci at the San Jose Mercury News took your complaints to the Gap’s top brass and got some interesting responses. They even responded to our editorializing about the Gap’s general state of failure with some upbeat sentences touting their own profitability. Whoops! We guess we were wrong and everything is just fine. Wait, what about the three-year sales slump, the recent layoffs, and the fact that same-store sales (the most important indicator of the health of a retail operation) have fallen in 12 consecutive quarters. Teehee! Sorry, we were sooo mean!

Dear New Gap CEO: Here's How To Fix Your Stores

Dear New Gap CEO: Here's How To Fix Your Stores

A while back we asked the readers to tell us what was wrong with Gap, INC. Since we asked, they’ve sh*tcanned their CEO, closed a chain of stores, launched new ad campaigns featuring celebrities, rethought their merchandise and…nothing has has helped.

Banana Republic: "You Need To Create A New User Name Every 3-4 Months"

Banana Republic: "You Need To Create A New User Name Every 3-4 Months"

There’s some weirdness going on with Banana Republic’s store credit card website. Reader Bernard wrote us to say that a Banana Republic CSR told him that every 3-4 months Banana Republic’s credit card site would be “updated” and that everyone would have to re-register—including signing up for a new user name. Is this the case of an incompetent CSR, or is there something strange going on with Banana Republic’s credit card site? Has anyone else had trouble with it? Read Bernard’s email inside.

More Crap About The GAP

Pressler’s penny-pinching may have turned off the Gap’s core customers. Sweaters that were once 100% cotton or wool, for example, showed up in stores as acrylic blends, and people noticed. Banana Republic tried to woo the same high-end consumers as J. Crew but didn’t go far enough in offering luxury fabrics, like cashmere, that those shoppers wanted. In 2005, while department stores couldn’t sell enough $100-plus premium jeans, the Gap skipped denim and tried to push khakis. “Pressler went too far in focusing on costs at the expense of merchandising,” says Christine Chen, senior research analyst at Pacific Growth Equities. “Sometimes you just need to go with your gut and do what makes sense to get customers in the door.”

The article also mentions the way in which stores like H&M refresh their looks faster, drawing in and keeping customers in their 20s and 30s. By the time a look hits the GAP, it’s already over, and possibly expensive for the store and unflattering for the customer (skinny jeans?)—MEGHANN MARCO

Fink On Your Employer: Gap Inc.

Fink On Your Employer: Gap Inc.

Dog-like sycophants that we are, we love loyalty. Especially when people are more loyal to The Consumerist than the organization that helps them have a roof over their hands. A little bird tweets into our ear about the sugar daddy who pays his bills, Gap, Inc. Looks like they had a lot of whacky doodle malarkey going on with their online shopping system this week. Looks like we got a new stoolie as well.