Nasty Gal’s New Owner Is Pissing Off Customers

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Nasty Gal customers have taken to Twitter to lodge a number of complaints against the brand: un-trackable orders, duplicate charges, items that never arrived, and long wait times for answers to those problems. Some are calling it a “scam” and threatening to never shop there again. @NastyGalHelp’s mentions are a mess.

These issues trace back to the British fast fashion site Boohoo’s $20 million acquisition of Nasty Gal in late February, a few months after the latter filed for bankruptcy. Boohoo bought Nasty Gal’s intellectual property — its name, essentially — and customer databases, but not, as its customer service Twitter has been quick to point out to peeved shoppers, its operations.

Apparently this means that Boohoo doesn’t have access to tracking information for Nasty Gal orders placed before the acquisition on February 28th, and it doesn’t have to hand out refunds.

Based in Manchester, Boohoo is a fast fashion darling that outperformed the market last year, with revenue rising 40 percent to £195.4 million between 2015 and 2016. It wins, in part, by pumping out new products even faster than Zara does.

So it’s somewhat surprising that Boohoo didn’t adequately account for the logistical growing pains that came with its acquisition of Nasty Gal. Even if it didn’t take on the California-born brand’s operations, it did get its shopper database out of the deal — and not servicing those customers properly seems like a speedy route to alienating them.

Nasty Gal did tweet on March 6th that orders would be delivered between March 10th and 24th, though that doesn’t seem to be placating irritated customers.

A rep for Boohoo didn’t respond immediately to Racked’s request for comment on why these issues were cropping up, or how it’s planning to remedy them.

Nasty Gal founder Sophia Amoruso did, however, have something to say on the matter.

Update: A rep for Nasty Gal provided Racked the following comment:

With the shift of Nasty Gal’s ownership to the boohoo group, we understand that there have been frustrations among our customers brought on by some delays and errors with orders placed prior to the sale of the company. To combat this, we have a designated team working around the clock to sort through all orders as well as personally reaching out to customers who have vocalized concern. Most shipments should be received by month’s end, though in exceptional circumstances, some orders can’t be fulfilled. In those specific cases, the customer won’t be charged and we are reaching out to offer incentives. Nasty Gal has a fiercely loyal customer base and our team is working hard to provide customers with the service and distinctive style of product that they have grown to know and expect.