Schott NYC — Local services in New York

I just had a slightly humiliating, totally infuriating experience just now. I was in SOHO and stumbled across a new Schott store. Schott famously made the black leather motorcycle jacket that Marlon Brando wore in "The Wild Ones." It's iconic. Anyway, I bought a Schott wool coat in the late 90s that is still my go-to winter coat all these years later. So, I had a positive relationship with the brand. They famously highlight the fact that most of their jackets, coats, and even jeans are made in the USA. Great! I looked at a couple of short leather jackets, and while looking through their well organized racks, I see that the largest size displayed is just XL. I ask nicely if they have my size, which is 2X. So this tiny young lady has to go down to the basement to get products that they ostensibly make in my size. Already, that means that I'm seen as abnormal and other. You make my size, but you don't display it along with all the other sizes. Interesting. So I had to wait for a few minutes while she found the two jackets. She brought them up and put them on a rack by a mirror. Nice. One, I was just able to zip up. However, it would not be advisable for me to try to eat anything while wearing a jacket that tight, including a macaron. The second jacket, which I really liked better, couldn't even zip close. When the young lady came back and saw the two items back on their hangers, I politely informed her that Schott has a very strange idea as to what 2X is. She started embarrassing herself by trying to give reason, and I simply cut her off and said in a regular tone of voice that big guys like me expect nothing from the shopping experience. I then put on my made in Vietnam Levi's nylon jacket, collected my shopping bags (ti's the season), and thanked the young man who opened the door for me. To use the language of online branding, I had a negative impression. Schott does not seem to understand anymore what shape and size Americans are. They did in the late 90s, when I bought my beloved coat. Not only can I zip it up, I could eat a full meal while wearing it and not feel like a stuffed Thankgiving turkey. Though I bought into the made in America thing, that gets stale fast when they won't display your size and their fit is way off. Schott is now just one more brand that is dead to me. It's actually kinda sad. I really liked that made in...

I’ve been collecting vintage Schott's for several years, and was really looking forward to visiting the flagship store.

I read the reviews before I visited, and was prepared for the lackadaisical in-store service. Still, I found a jacket I liked and decided to order it online.

After a lengthy shipping interval, my $1200 jacket arrived tied up in a plain plastic dry cleaner bag. I tried it on, and quickly noticed the myriad defects in manufacturing and materials. The inner pocket lining was twisted and stitched to the outer seam, rendering the pockets lumpy and useless. Worse, the sleeves were visibly two different sizes, and made from two different hide thicknesses.

I contacted costumer service, and was bluntly referred back to the website. I had to ask repeatedly to get basic questions answered. It was clear with every email exchange (perhaps seven in all, to complete a basic transaction) that the rep simply could not have cared less about my experience, or whether I remained a Schott customer.

I was interested in an exchange, but at no point was I assured that the shocking defects I encountered in my jacket were important to the company or likely to be remedied in a replacement.

Eventually, I pulled the plug on the transaction before the experience could sour my affection for my vintage collection. The final slight? I was charged return shipping on my defective jacket.

I could not be more disappointed in their disinterest in my business.

Edit: Regarding Schott's rather stand-offish reply below: I counted, it was actually nine emails over three weeks to resolve this. My first email was completely ignored. After my second, I got a one line reply. No email from the Schott rep was more than one or two sentences in length. None acknowledged that there was anything unusual about my jacket.

Schott's reply mentions a refund on October 22nd. Which is to say, they acknowledge that they knowingly charged me return shipping on a garment "that never should have left the factory," and that I had to send yet another email to remedy the situation.

This company is rightly famous for more than a century of great jackets, but from quality control to service recovery, the onus now seems to rest solely on the customer.

Just...

Can't give any stars to a product that was advertised but never available. I don't live in the same state as a Schott NY store. That said, in four years, I had been in and out of the New York City location twice, went to the website innumerable times, called every fall and had even been hung up on by their rude staff, and after all that, NEVER found access to a leather naval peacoat (P-coat) from them in my size, a Long. Not in the base model, not in the premium model. It was never in stock in my common chest size (44). One season they said they'd do custom work, the next season they don't. One year they make the leather navel pee-coat in Long, then the next year they're discontinued. I had been thinking of pitching the idea of making leather navel peacoat a uniform option for the captains at our airline, but given how unreliable and out of control their inventory is, this would only be a liability to a big airline. Schott really dropped the ball on this one. Opportunity...LOST.

REPLY to Schott: If an airline stops serving a city then it also STOPS trying to sell seats to a flight they no longer do. They also don’t keep telling people to wait, they could change their minds. It’s okay I got to Toledo using Cockpit...