Rent The Runway

This is by far one of the worst experiences with customer service I have ever had. The tracking number they sent me was old and did not work. The customer service department came up with some lame excuse that sometimes they accidentally send old tracking numbers. Um wtf? The dresses only looked slightly worn when I received them BUT both sizes I ordered smelled as if someone had sweat in them profusely and then had not ever been cleaned. I had to have the dress that fit me cleaned in order for it to be bearable to wear the night of the wedding and even after cleaning I still smelled body odor on it (and I assure you it was not my own). I even reviewed the dresses on the RTR website and explained how terrible they smelled and no one from customer service bothered to apologize for my bad experience. Finally, I decided to return the dresses in a UPS drop box since the return instructions explicitly said that was fine and a month later I receive an email saying the dresses were late and I was subject to up to 200% of the retail price of the dress depending on how late they were. They conveniently contacted me after store hours on a friday night so I could not call them until the following monday. I spent 90 minutes on hold Monday morning and finally hung up because I had to go to work. I emailed them and for 2 days still receiving no response. Then I decided to call again and their phone lines were having "technical difficulties" in which I emailed them again and have still heard nothing. So all in all I suggest NEVER ORDER ANYTHING FROM THIS BOGUS COMPANY.

I have been a loyal member of Rent the Runway for over five years. A few years ago in exchange for providing a tremendous amount of feedback on the membership program, I received an email from their CEO Jennifer Hyman telling me that as thanks for participating I was going to have a lifetime guarantee of never paying more than $139/month for my membership. In the fall of 2020, RTR announced a new structure for their memberships. When I wrote to inquire why they were moving away from the old model which I really preferred, they said that only 6% of members are loyal users like me, so they don't see a reason to keep those loyal customers happy. When I have followed up on numerous occasions regarding the price guarantee, they refuse to give a valid reason that they won't honor their promise, instead they just say that they aren't going to honor it because they don't want to. Once again I'm left wondering why the loyal customers mean so little to them.

RTR has never had good customer service, and in the past year it has gotten significantly worse. There's no way to reach someone the same day, there's an autoreply on all emails that they'll get back to you in three days. At the same time, the selection of clothes to chose from has gotten much smaller, and they are keeping overworn pieces in the rotation longer. I would say one in every eight items I rent has a quality issue and is not wearable.

It's hard for me to understand why they are moving to a new business model that includes less clothes, poorer quality clothes, less availability of customer service and not caring about those customers who have stayed with them the longest. Ultimately it's their choice to run their company how they want to, it's just really disappointing to see as a once loyal advocate for this once great brand. I hope they will reconsider these changes, but if not there are other clothing rental services to use.

I am honestly surprised by all of these negative reviews. I have used RTR three times for events, and I have just signed up for their unlimited service ($139/month plus tax). All of my individual rental experiences were great. The dresses arrived on time, they were good quality, and I loved that I could choose a backup size. I signed up for unlimited last week, and it has been great so far. I selected my first group of items on Friday morning and had them in hand Saturday afternoon. I mailed them back Monday morning, and I've already received an email that it's time for me to make my next selections (today is Tuesday), which will likely arrive tomorrow (Wednesday). I do live in NYC, so my deliveries are done by courier, and I return items through UPS to a receiving facility that is nearby in NJ. Maybe the delivery times vary depending on how close you are to a delivery facility. And it is true that the Unlimited selections are more limited because items are constantly being rented and returned by other customers. I wish there were some way to queue up for items I really want if they are not currently available, but I understand they cannot guarantee something will be available at any given time since they let customers keep items for as long as they want. But even with those limitations, this service has been great so far. I love being able to try so many new things since I am a person who gets bored with something after I've worn it a couple of times. This is a great way to expand my wardrobe and to give me access to special / standout pieces that I wouldn't necessarily want to spend a ton of money on to wear only a few times.

I was looking to rent a few pieces for my trip coming up and decided to create an account and pay for their upgraded membership.

Unfortunately, their checkout page doesn't even work. I was prompted to enter my shipping address and billing information which I did and tried to submit. Each time, an error message came back saying I did not enter in a shipping address. I thought there was something wrong with their server at the moment so decided to leave it be for a couple hours. Fast forward few hours later, same problem persists and I decide to call the number prompted by the error message.

The selling point to why I will never use this website again is there customer service. I was finally able to get a hold of someone on the line and she sounded rude and unapologetic about their system being wack! She asked me if I lived in apartment which I told her no, my address is a single home residence then put me on hold for more than 10 minutes. When she got back to the line, she just confirmed that it was a bug on their website since she tried to enter in the address on her side and it wasn't working either.

Well? What am I suppose to do? According to this representative, she told me to keep trying until it worked which I gladly said, I will never return to their website again. What a waste of time.

I guess, I got lucky today since their system had problems. I didn't read the reviews for this website beforehand and with such low reviews, I doubt there wouldn't be more problems once I start renting.

Also, its weird that they don't have an option to remove address and billing information you saved into their website. This should be illegal, anyone should have the right to delete there personal information from the website. I will have to call them again about this since I wanted to delete my account.

Contacted customer service and never received a refund/credit. And, my review somehow "disappeared".

I highly suggest you tread lightly with Rent the Runway.

I was charged $2400 in late fees for dresses that I didn't even know were late- I handed over dresses on the correct return date, but the mail room failed to ship them out.

Regardless of where the fine print places liability, there are some HUGE failings on Rent the Runway's part that are dangerous to their customers.

1. In the 37 days between the expected return date and when I got a voicemail from the Collections Department, I received zero communication that there was even an issue. No email, no call, nothing on my online account, no letters saying that the package never made it back to them.

2. When I received the invoice to forward to the hotel that mishandled the package, a line item on the document said that RTR already charged $650 of the fee to my credit card. I never got a notification about this nor was it mentioned in the email that had the attached invoice.

3. I have not been able to get a collections representative on the phone for two weeks to walk through the details of this issue. Over email I get a maximum of two sentence responses that obviously skirt any sort of detail (i. E the $650 charge to my card.)

If the issue at hand was getting their inventory back, why did I not receive a single notification in nearly 40 days? $2400 for a month of missing dresses is much, much more than they would have made renting those dresses back out to other customers (rough math tells me it is over 4x what they would have made renting them out to other customers)

Rent the Runway has proven that their contracts are predatory to the customer, their customer service is slippery, and that they have lost my business along with the people I have told this insane story to.

I rented a dress for a very important formal affair. The fit was okay but when I received it I noticed that it had a hole in the back. I didn't want to deal with the hassle and stress of having to exchange it because my event was the only 2 days away so I decided to wear it. I was embarrassed to be wearing a torn dress to such a fancy event but I decided to just push through. But things go so much worse when the gala started... when I arrived at the event and hugged by first friend I noticed that the armpits of the dress had a horrible BO smell, I almost gagged right then and there. I was mortified and I could feel my cheeks getting red, all I wanted to do was run home and tear this stinky dress of. But I had no choice, I had to press on through the evening. I embraced probably 30-40 people that night, all of whom probably now think that I have a body odor problem. I spent what was supposed to be a fun evening sitting surrounded by the fumes of the previous renters BO. I didn't get up to dance or mingle and didn't go the after party because I was so embarrassed. It completely ruined my evening. To add insult to injury, the next morning I sent RTR an e-mail explaining what had happened and got no response. I continued to e-mail every other day for a week and finally they wrote me back a brief note saying, "our apologies that you had a bad experience". So I followed up with a phone call where I was told that because I kept the dress for the rental period (which was over a weekend) I was not entitled to a refund. The representative was horribly rude and told me I should have contacted them sooner (I had been sending e-mails for 9 days). I then asked to speak to her supervisor and she said there wasn't one. I will never ever in a million years rent from RTR again.

Like many of you, I've been watching this service overtime and have been told it's amazing. So I eventually pulled the trigger and rented a dress for a wedding this weekend. I spent a lot of time looking for the right dress and I was proactive in looking for a dress weeks before the wedding. I found the perfect dress, bought accessories and matched my kids' outfits to my dress. To then find out through an email that the dress was returned and they were asking for a review on how it worked for me the day before it was supposed to arrive at my doorstep?! So I get on the phone with customer service, which by the way was a 30 minute wait, to then find out it was a UPS sortment error and it accidentally was shipped back to them. I have so many problems with this because: 1) Now, I, the customer is screwed and paying the consequence and 2) If it was a UPS error they had plenty of time to let me know that this occurred and to get the package re-shipped out to me in time for my event. But no, someone on the Rent the Runway side thought it was perfectly fine to get a package back the very next day after it was shipped to then put it through "quality control measures" and dry-cleaning. 3) Then just send me an email asking me how my dress fit? Come on, anyone with common sense or company with real quality measures would have realized that there was an error on the UPS side. Even the phone rep could instantly tell me what the error was. The phone rep was very sweet and did her best to recover and send me two other options but at the end of the day they could not get my original size out to me and now I'm stuck with secondhand options. I could've spent all this time searching and troubleshooting (which combined was at least 3 hours) to just buying a dress. So thanks for wasting my time and my money and making this a very stressful situation Rent the Runway.

I have been using rent the runway for several months now. At first, there were no issues because I had the Unlimited and so the delivery times and dates were not set in stone. However, twice I have needed items for special events, and went outside of my unlimited package to ensure that the items I wanted would be available and deliver to me prior to the special events. This meant that I would have to pay the rental fee for each item, in addition to the $139 unlimited fee that I was already paying each month. I was willing to do that to make sure that I did receive these items on the dates that I requested them. Twice I tried this, twice Rent-the-Runway FAILED me. There will not be a third time. I am canceling my unlimited membership to them as well as a protest to the poor customer service and "sorry, but there's nothing else we can do" attitude.
Both times I paid extra to rent items, they were not delivered until the due date to return them BACK to RTR. To add insult to injury, I started receiving emails directing me to be sure to return the items (which I had not even received) back by noon, or face a daily late fee!
Of course, after having to panic to run around town to find something suitable to pay full price for to wear to my events at the last minute, and not getting prompt responses to my emails - and, then getting very curt one's later, made for a very memorable few days, and not good memories.
In short, if you don't care when your items arrive and if you don't care about having to return them without even having an opportunity to wear what you rented, then Rent-the-Runway is for you. Otherwise, I would suggest trying a different rental program that hasn't gotten too big to remember that it's the individual customer that keeps customer service companies in business

I went to the shop in the Flatiron district and met with a wonderful woman who helped me pick out the perfect dress for my son's wedding. The dress was high-end and cost over $300 for the two night rental, which I reluctantly paid because it was my son's wedding. In the month leading up to the event, I spent hundreds of $ more on jewelry, shoes, and other accessories to match the dress. As the date approached I got emails alerting me that my dress was arriving. 2 days before the wedding, I came home to ABSOLUTELY NOTHING... NO DRESS! Called them in the morning... they informed me that my dress was not coming! When I screamed that it was the day before my son's wedding and I had nothing to wear, they gave no explanation but said that they could send a different dress but couldn't guarantee that it would come by the 3:00 start of the ceremony. NOT HELPFUL AT ALL! I then spent a very stressful and expensive day scrambling to put together a new outfit. My advice to anyone even thinking about Rent the Runway is to RUN IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION! They are not reliable and should be shut down.

I was excited to try Rent the Runway for a black tie optional wedding. I reserved my dress almost 2 months in advance and anxiously awaited its arrival 1 day before the event. The day before the event, in the morning, I checked the tracking information. Not yet available. Strange, but ok. Later that afternoon, I once more checked the tracking info. It stated that my dress was scheduled to arrive in 3 days - Two days AFTER the event I needed it for. In a panic, I called RTR customer service. They confirmed my shipment was in fact lost. They offered to send me the same dress in a smaller size. They then emailed me a list of alternative "similar" dresses that were available. I wouldn't have been caught dead in any of those dresses. I picked one, only to find that one too was being shipped in a size too small for me to have any hope of fitting into.

No one should have to scramble less than 24 hours to find a gown for a black tie event. RTR refunding my money and shipping me replacement dresses that I couldn't and didn't want to wear didn't even begin to fix my problem. Had I steered clear of this abomination of a business altogether, I would have had ample time to find the perfect dress to wear.

What this company doesn't understand is that giving a refund because something happened doesn't solve the problem. It is the bare minimum that I would expect of them. They do not seem to understand what a pickle they put you in when you are completely relying on wearing the dress you reserved and then have the rug pulled out from under you at literally the last minute.

I would never again in my life use RTR and I will go to the ends of the earth telling every single person I ever meet not to go anywhere near this pathetic excuse for a business.

Don't rely on the items you ordered to show up. Good luck! I had an order for months and it magically got cancelled 4 days before my event.

I originally placed my order 2 months prior to my event and updated it 3 weeks prior to my event. RTR emailed me the day my dress was supposed to arrive to tell me it would not be arriving as expected (it was arriving the following day, which was too late for me). The consideration offered for the inconvenience on my end, is that they offered a full refund if the dress would no longer be arriving on time. No kidding. You are going to give me my money back for the service you are not providing me? (That should be a given). If RTR really wanted to show they cared and that they were "sincerely" apologetic, they would have sent me a list of all the dresses they could get to me on time, in my size, and honored the original price I paid, regardless of the cost of the dress. Or they could have offered me a free rental in the future, to try to gain my trust and business back. What they really should do is send me a check for the cost of a last minute babysitter that I'm going to have to find so that I can go out and buy a dress. (That's if I can even find a babysitter at the last minute.)

RTR's whole business model is built on the fact that people actually TRUST that they are going to receive a dress on time. Without that trust, who in their right mind would wait until the day or two before an event to find out if they are actually going to receive a dress? If RTR only delivers on time, some of the time, there is no way they can sustain their business model and keep customers. The thing I loved and made me so excited about Rent the Runway, was the convenience. I have a 6 month old and a 3 year old and finding a babysitter isn't easy. RTR allowed me to shop from my own home--so, SO cool and convenient! Oh wait, now I have to find a babysitter last minute when I get home from work tonight at 5:30 pm so that I can go dress shopping for the wedding I have to fly to tomorrow morning. Oh and I have to pack tonight too. Looks like I won't be sleeping.

I am so sick of the pitfalls of being an RTR member. I have had unlimited for sometime, trying to let the positive outweigh the ugly, because this is a fun way to wear new designer clothes each week.

PROS
- new arrivals weekly
- selection of high-quality clothing, specifically dresses

CONS
- the CEO only cares about making money and not about customer experience. Designers have declined to be a part of RTR because she isn't a good business partner.
- RTR consistently closes the store at the busiest hours to hold private company events. They are a $1B company and they can't rent a venue for their company parties? They choose instead to inconvenience their members so they can have a party celebrating how much money they make.
- the employees at the store ignore you unless you ask for help.
- so much HASSLE. I constantly have to contact customer service to fix something- whether its a bug in the app or a delay in shipping. They cannot get their logistics together and the customers have to do all the legwork
- 3rd party couriers. They use these terrible couriers that attempt to deliver at 10pm- showing up on a bike or an unmarked van. There's no way to mark an address as a business and so they show up trying to deliver to a closed office.
- items are always unavailable. Its hard to find something to rent. They knock items out of your cart or tell you it became unavailable
-they've grown too big without the support to handle it. The store is always too crowded and stressful. There's been delays in shipments since they offered additional spots in the rental subscription. Don't offer it if you cant support it!
- communication is SLOW. They don't tell you until 4+ hours later that one of the pieces you ordered is unavailable. When you email customer service, they respond days later once you've had to resolve the issue for yourself

At this price point, I'd expect a luxury experience. Instead its a chore to arrange everything.

It was my understanding the majority of options were available in the unlimited section. I wanted to try this service because I had a couple of weddings to attend and with the discount figured it was worth a try. I already had a list of favorites before I signed up the majority were between the $50-100 range if I were to rent them separately. After I sign up I quickly realize the majority of my likes are not offered in unlimited which was pretty disappointing considering they are on the lower end of the price range. My rentals were great, but the time between picking items and sending them back can take about 6-8 days so you are only looking at about 3 rounds if you are on top of it. One of the items cancelled out of my shipment and I was not even notified I just noticed it disappeared. I enjoyed my rentals, but $150 a month is too much. $100 a month makes sense to me. The thing that really put a bad taste in my mouth about this option was when I first called to cancel they told me I needed to wait for them to receive the items to cancel and be refunded and to call back then. Once I received the email that they had received everything I called to cancel. They said I would receive the refund within 3-5 days. It has been 4 business days and out of curiosity I called them to make sure everything was processed. They said that they had never processed the refund. I guess they don't keep notes in their system because they didn't seem to know that I had ever called before. They told me that I couldn't get a refund until they had received the items and that I must have called before then. I assured them I had called after the items were returned. Basically if you cancel make sure you are refunded because it seems like they may tell you one thing and do another.