Good News Indeed - Barneys Warehouse Now Accepting Returns

Shopping Outlets in general are a huge bag of shady junk and more shady junk with sprinkles of gold hiding in there if you know how/have the patience to filter out the mountains of poop. There are some that are better than others, though, and Barneys Warehouse has the best combination of quality stock and heavy price cuts out of the online outlets by far, in my opinion. They often have extra ____% off sales that can drop quality brands to >80% discount, which is where I bought a Crombie great coat a few weeks ago for $400's down from $2450 list. I've also bought some Naked and Famous denim for $40's, Alex Mill sweatshirts for $30's, and they've had Buttero Tanino's recently for $130's, a ton of Drake's, Ermenegildo Zegna, Isaia, etc.

The downside to those types of deals to this point was that all sales were final, and not the J. Crew or Bonobos type of "final sale" where you could just ask them to make an exception and they would let you off the hook. I even ran a few searches to see if Barneys ever made exceptions, and prior customers noted that unless something was clearly wrong with the product on arrival and you sent documented proof of such, you could not return anything ever. They had to be approved by supervisors who reviewed the evidence, and so on.

That's a pretty big deal because Barneys Warehouse sizing advice is basically nonexistent, and that makes buying any items a risky endeavor, let alone expensive ones. Those N&F jeans I bought before? I had to sell one pair off immediately because I got the sizing wrong on a fit I hadn't tried in person (it's cool, the price I paid was so low I actually made a few bucks on it, but still).

This morning BW sent out an email that they are now accepting returns on men and women's clothing, although that comes with a $9.95 return fee with a prepaid label for shipping back. Even with the return fee, it's a hell of a lot better than being on the hook for a $600 coat that doesn't fit you, and don't forget that shipping on purchases is free. At most, you're committing ten bucks all-in on a deal that could save you hundreds easily on a good find*.

My general BW strategy is to line up pages showing 96 items per page by designer or recency (I usually use recency because I've been through the thousands of old items already) and then adding things to your cart to keep track of them - unless it's something you can't live without at that moment. Every few weeks/months, they have an extra 30-60% off sale that rotates through shoes, outerwear, clearance, etc, and that's when you can score great pieces at prices so low you can't help but smile.

Returns being a standard part of the system now on all clothing changes the game by reducing the risk of purchases being an all-or-nothing gamble to this point. It's definitely something to keep in mind on one of the best deals sites on the web.

Link to Barneys Warehouse Online (by designer)

Link to Barneys Warehouse Online (by new)

*Note that none of this (except free shipping) seems to apply to accessories or other non-clothing items, so those would still be final sale.

**Unrelated Pro Tip - if there's a lot of a particular brand available on sale, be wary of why that is. Also, house brands may look interesting and/or well-priced, but they're usually very hard to trace in terms of quality and consistency, so I would avoid them in general.