Your company has been in business forever for one reason, consistency. When you want something that fits the same way, looks the same way and comes in a high quality cotton, wool, down, rubber, felt, flannel etc you go to LL Bean. I have been less than thrilled with the styling and feel of many items I have ordered the last 6 or 7 years. I ordered about 13 flannel shirts in various styles. Was not wild about the prints they came in, but thought maybe they will be better in person, all but 1 went back. They were all these strange
Wide weaves, and not in traditional plaids prints and traditional plaid colors. I want a 50's -70s' looking flannel shirt and old New England Yankee styling. They could have used the styles in their mid 80's cataloque and I would have been pleased as punch. I don't want innovation from them. The new stuff looks like it was made by Coldwater Creek, the Sundance Company, or Chicos, not LL Bean

The children's uniform pants, shirts, socks and skirts I bough a few years ago just did not have the quality stitching and fabric I expect from them the socks felt like plastic socks, not like buttery cotton. Dear Lord, were the flannel and 100 percale sheets a disappointment and the towels as well. Only the sheep skin slippers were up to their old selves.

So my suggestion to there buyers and designers would be to not rethink it, stick to boxy v neck or boy friend tee, old school flannel coats and down jackets, a rain slicker that looks like it came off a Nantucket pier in 1975, and more Nantucket Vines classic preppy style. Things like the moccasins your Mom wore during the summers in the 60's -80's, or flannel shirt you wore to a concert in the 80's or 90's.

I might tweak the home collection, and bring it more towards shaker rather than Stickley or William Morris Aesthetic Movement stuff, people are more into School House Electric, or Serena & Lilly now. A bit of classic American colonial or modern cleaner lines would be good.

So bring the clothing back to classic prep and the home furnishing more modern or more classically American traditional. Bold colors, nice student lamps enamel, nice Ralph Lauren looking bedding.

I have never liked their customer service department much and always swayed towards shopping more with Land End and the Bass Pro shop as they are great over there. Their whole policy and how anal they are in negotiate things and lack of apology, always makes me feel like I am dealing with a stuck up, over educated judgmental nerd who thinks he is brighter than you, and that you should be thanking him for allowing you to shop at his store. The store employees are very sweet.

I have been an LLBean customer for decades. I would agree that they have been a fine company to deal with and buy from for most of that time. However, and sadly, in the last year from my own experience, they have drastically changed their returns process. Whereas before, on the rare occasions when I needed to return something due to a workmanship defect, they were prompt, courteous, and sincerely interested in making whatever was wrong, right. As you may know, in the last several years, they changed from an open date return policy to a more typical, one year policy. Unfortunate, but understandable. But this last year, they have started micro managing each return, and challenging anything they can to try and say that a defect is "normal wear", in order to keep from having to stand by their warranty of even a year. The recent experience I had was to order in November 2021, a pair of their lined, double soled bison house slipper mocs. Wonderfully comfortable, and a delight in every way. Because of their materials and excellent construction, I presumed they would live longer than I would. However, the right slipper wore through the outer leather sole by Feb 2022. Odd, but I put it down to a thin piece of leather that had slipped through the QC process. Returned for an exchange. Finally received a call mid March from the "Returns Evaluation Dept" trying to say that, although they hadn't seen any significant number of this item being returned, perhaps this was Normal Wear and Tear.
Pointing out that the other shoe showed no signs of wear-through made no impression. Pointing out that this was a house slipper and not a running shoe made no dent in the absurdity of this position. Reluctantly, the person to whom I spoke agreed to send the replacement, but only with the admonition that if this were to happen again, it wouldn't be honored under their warranty.
Conclusion: Somebody in Cost Containment has clearly gotten the idea that the returns dept is a big problem and must be brought to heel. Presumably, if this is not just my individual experience, this will be an unfortunate, but passing, phase, since it will ultimately dampen sales. For now, I can only say that I will consider shopping with them on par with any other typical, big box clothing/outdoor store. And I will assume that I am considered simply a consumer unit, and not an appreciated customer. If I buy, fine; if I don't, fine. I can always be replaced with another consumer unit.

I've always thought of L. L. Bean as being an excellent manufacturer of clothing. Yes, their prices are more expensive than other mainstream manufacturers, but I've never really minded those extra costs because they are purported to have one of the best warranties in their industry. In fact, they used to offer a lifetime warranty but had to stop it a few years ago after apparent abuses – but, to me, that didn't matter very much because they still offer a 1-year return on their clothing and will even consider older clothing for returns due to defective materials or craftsmanship. Because of this, I've always had a certain peace-of-mind about paying the extra costs that L. L. Bean demands.

However, after trying to replace a pair of jeans after 22 months, I realized their "guarantees" aren't as solid as they seem to want you to believe.

In January 2020, I purchased 3 pair of jeans under Item #: TC******* in 3 different colors for $49.95 each. One of them (the Faded Denim) has started to wear quite badly in the corners of both back pockets. In fact, on one of the pockets, you can see straight through the material. In November 2021, I sent the jeans, along with my original receipt and pictures to their RMA department for consideration for replacement and was told that my warranty claim was denied because, in their opinion, the jeans had worn from normal wear-and-tear. I explained that I only wear jeans occasionally, I only wear them for causal use (not for work), and I have several other L. L. Bean jeans which have not suffered the same issue. Unfortunately, none of it mattered and she reiterated, to her, it looks like normal wear-and-tear.

I live in south Texas - we only wear jeans a handful of weeks throughout the year. Even then, I only wear my nice jeans (L. L. Bean) for holiday gatherings, family outings, or other events where I know they're not going to be destroyed. My other L. L. Bean jeans, (which are in great condition) are evident of that. It seems clear that these were just a defective pair, but they wanted to stick to their conclusion.

Over the past 5 years, I've spent $3,943 on L. L. Bean clothing and, up until now, I've been very happy with their quality. I wasn't even worried about these defective jeans because I know bad manufacturing happens sometimes and I'd never had any faulty clothing from them before.

To me, L. L. Bean has painted a picture that they weren't really concerned about the customer service, so, to that end, I have returned my most recent order of $224 (which they did refund) and when my family and friends ask where I get my nice clothes from, I will be answering with a different manufacturer and will dissuade them from considering L. L. Bean. Yes, their clothes do look nice, but their costs are simply too high to chance on a product that might fail after less than 50 uses.

Great service, great products and even got the credit card to enjoy addiitional rewards.

Always open, knowledgeable and helpful

Never issues

Love

I love shoppinghere and the quality is good. Just a bit pricy

A little high priced

Nice place to shop but needs improvement