I’ve posted before about buying American made jeans. I’ve come to like the All American Clothing jeans quite well, and so I’ve placed a number of orders there over the years. My first order was placed back on March 9, 2009, and was order #40208. It was for 3 pairs of jeans: one American made Carhartt black jeans, one pair of carpenter jeans, and one pair of their “AA101” jeans at $34.95. Curiously, the second order was 2 years to the day later, and included 2 pr of the AA101’s at $39.95. (Order 63502). I had accidentally ordered the wrong size of one type, but the person reviewing the order noticed the discrepancy and emailed me to double check. Score an A for customer service!!
At some point, they stopped selling the Carhartt, and then at a later time they added an AA101B in black. I’m not sure exactly when it was, but I did file this into their customer service website back on November 13, 2013:
Another abandoned cart. So, here I am with 3 pairs of jeans in my shopping cart, and I want to add a fourth — black jeans in size 37×32. But they’re not in stock. You don’t give me an option to back-order them, or anything else. I would backorder them. I’d be glad to wait for them to come back in stock, then have you ship the whole order. But I’m not going to buy 3 pair now, and have to pay to ship the fourth pair later. I’ve been waiting for the black jeans. One of my first orders with you, you still had Carhartt black jeans (I believe it was), and I ordered them. But then you stopped carrying them (perhaps it was that they were no longer made in America). So I ordered my black jeans from Diamond Gusset. But now I’ve been trying to place an order here for quite some time (not continually, mind you, just every so often when I think of it and have the time. Sometimes when you send an ad, I check out the site and try to place my order). But this is at least the second time that one of the items is out of stock. You also don’t offer me a way to be notified when an item does come back in stock, so it comes down to when I think of it and have the time. C’mon, now — you’re American! You can do better than this! 🙂
There was some back and forth in email, all very pleasant and thoughtful with their staff, but it wasn’t until 6 months later that I was able to order the jeans. So that was May of 2014 that I placed my next order, #112475, and the AA101’s were $48.99. They did give me a 20% discount on the black pair for having had to wait so long. At that time, they were promoting some concept of “traceability” and each pair of pants came with some little card with a unique number on it with which you could go to some website to look up the provenance of your jeans. I never bothered. Presumably, you could see pictures of the actual cotton plants that went into your jeans or something like that. And presumably, that was at least part of the justification for the big cost increase.
On the day of the last snowstorm of this season (fingers crossed…), I took a spill which ended up ripping my beloved AA101B’s, so that very same day I went to order a replacement pair. Another pair of blue jeans was getting a bit worn, too, so it was definitely time for an order. When I visited the site, I was dismayed to see that they were discontinuing the AA101B, due to lack of demand.
I don’t know, but it seems to me that demand would be pretty hard to measure if you don’t carry a product for 6+ months, and don’t allow people to back order it, and don’t provide a means for people to learn when something comes back in stock. Sheesh. So, not only that, but they didn’t have my inseam. Not only that, but there was no “sale” on the discontinued product. When I asked customer service, they said that I could get them hemmed for $10 more. After some email back and forth, they offered a 15% discount on the now $52.95 (!) jeans. So I bought 2 pair and had them hemmed. Order #205091 And now, what do I see a week later? Now they are selling them at $25/pair.
Thanks a lot, All American Clothing. I think that back when I initially ordered, the Diamond Gusset jeans were a bit over $50, so they were a lot more than the All Americans. But they have not gone up in price much, while the All Americans have gone up way faster than my salary. Not sure there will be a fifth order from me.
