Shopper enraged over Saks Fifth Avenue dress return ‘nightmare’: ‘Something fishy’
A woman reportedly had a bizarre experience when trying to return a dress at Saks Fifth Avenue — and she’s warning shoppers to be wary.
Brittany Paige, a content creator on TikTok, has gone viral with a three-part story of the incident, amassing over 550,600 collective views, and has prompted viewers to share that they’ve allegedly had nightmare experiences with the luxury retailer as well.
“There’s something extremely fishy going on with Saks,” she claimed in the first video, posted on Sept. 27.
“They’re basically robbing people and scamming people left and right,” she claimed before going into the whole story.
Paige explained that while shopping for maid-of-honor dresses for her sister’s wedding, she ordered a few dresses from Saks as options, including a $700 Ramy Brook dress. She said it was a “splurge” but wanted to give it a shot.
She tried it on for “maybe five minutes,” but ultimately decided to go with another dress and shipped this one back as a return. After about a month went by, Paige purportedly got the dress back in the mail from Saks.
Paige said that she had been waiting for her refund and clarified in text on the video that she allegedly “never received an email stating they rejected the return nor did the status change in the customer portal.”
On the Saks Fifth Avenue website, it states that rejected returns will be sent back “with an explanation.”
But Paige reportedly did not received an explanation until she called customer service, and the agent told her that the return was rejected “because it had deodorant stains and odor and looked worn.”
Paige said both she and her mom inspected the dress that was sent back to her and there was “nothing wrong” with it. She then claims she submitted eight “thorough” photos of the dress to customer service showcasing that the dress was in new condition so they could open a case.
Later that day the company allegedly emailed her back and said that “due to deodorant stains and body odor they will not be accepting the return.”
Paige called customer service again and got in touch with a “really nice” representative who agreed that there was nothing wrong with the dress, but she purportedly said she did not have the authority to issue the return.
“Anytime that I’ve mentioned asking speaking to a manager with Saks, they get extremely dicey about it and they, like, try to deter you from asking,” Paige claimed, adding that she eventually spoke to someone after insisting, but they had “no authority to do anything anyway.”
She said she was told that the only thing she could do was wait for another email to see if they would accept the dress or not.
But this wasn’t the only incident Paige had with the luxury department store.
She had purchased two other dresses before this dress and returned them, and it took 60 days for her to get her money back, saying that she was calling customer service every week about the status of the refund. The Saks website states that returns generally take up to 30 days to process.
“I thankfully did get the refund on those other dresses, but this one I just have a bad feeling about it,” she said.
“Lastly, I have not one, but two friends who have told me that they have purchased something from Sak’s and Saks shipped them a different item, and when they tried to return it, Saks would not take the return,” she shared.
One of the friends allegedly purchased a Gucci wallet for her husband for Christmas and she received a lesser value wallet. The other friend purchased sneakers and they allegedly sent her a different pair of sneakers, different brand, two sizes different.
“They are robbing people, they are scamming people, there is something up there, and I am warning you if you are looking to make an expensive purchase, or really any purchase, do not purchase anything from Saks,” she claimed.
Commenters let Paige now that she wasn’t alone.
“This is like the 5th Saks nightmare story I’ve heard of,” one person wrote.
“HEY! I am actually having a physical response to seeing your TikTok cause this EXACTLY happened to me. It took me 6 months of nonsense,” another claimed.
“The same thing happened to me! But karma eventually caught up to them when I bought a $130 bracelet that was on sale and they sent me a $2k bracelet instead,” someone else alleged.
“The same EXACT thing happened to me with a very expensive dress also for a wedding. Tried it on like you for 5 minutes and went through the whole ordeal you went through,” a user said.
“Omg the same thing happened to my mom! Same story, deodorant stains (there are none)and couldn’t return them. She called, emailed photos and has talked multiple times. They will not allow the return,” one wrote.
The comments of the same or similar instances happening to other users goes on and on.
A Saks spokesperson said in a statement to The Post: “Across the retail industry, there has been an increase in online fraud, particularly related to returns. As such, we have added more rigorous steps in our return process, including additional quality checking and stronger authentication.
“In some instances, this has unfortunately resulted in longer than expected return processing times. Our top priority is ensuring our customers enjoy the luxury shopping experience for which Saks is known and we will continue to take steps to improve our processes moving forward.”
Additionally, Paige shared with The Post that she received a phone call on Friday from someone who works for the Saks Executive team telling her that they were informed of her circumstance, was sorry for the inconvenience and she would personally be handling the case going forward.
The Saks employee provided Paige with a Fedex return label and assured her that she won’t end up in an endless cycle. On Monday the employee followed up with Paige and said that the package was scanned in on Saturday and she would process the refund. The refund is currently pending on Paige’s credit card statement.
Paige is unsure if she was contacted because her video went viral or because she filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau (BBB) or a combination of the two.
She said in a follow-up TikTok that her gut feeling was that it was because of the video, but she did get a message form the BBB saying that the retailer said that they have resolved the issue.
“I am still really enraged and frustrated and honestly just said that so many people have been affected by similar or exact experiences with Saks,” she said. “Customers shouldn’t have to make a video and hope that it goes viral in order to get back a refund that is rightfully theirs.”
