Athleta: Activewear & Apparel

Up until today, I have been a LOYAL Athleta customer. Always the first place I would shop for fitness merchandise. About 1-2 months ago, I purchased two pairs of shorts. I realised that they were too big. Yesterday, I went to the app to check when I purchased them and were they a “final sale”. And all I got under “Purchase History” was this message “Something went wrong. Uh oh! We weren’t able to complete your request. Refresh to try again”. Of course I hit Refresh multiple times and just kept getting the same failure message. I thought clearly this must be a short term issue. I’ll try again tomorrow. Well I tried again today. And I received the exact same failure message. So I decided I would go into town to the store and just do the return. As Athleta App’s purchase history still didn’t work and the invoice didn’t indicate the shorts were a “Final Sale”, I assumed I could return them. Turns out actually they were a “Final Sale”. I wasted my precious time having to go to the store and find out they couldn’t actually be returned. And I wasted treated like I was trying to do something bad violating Athleta’s policy. Wow! How about FIX your APP and don’t waste customers time.

I’m sad that Gap/Athleta has resorted to even more banners in the app and slower performance. My major problems with the app (as of Jan 31, 2023) 1. If you have anything in your cart, it’s constantly telling you how many people have that in their cart - aka high pressure sales - not cool. 2. Filters - the filters in this app are very slow, and it doesn’t support having multiple filters at the sale time without a major lag. 3. You forgot me? - If you click away from the app on your phone for even a minute, it re-opens to the homepage and doesn’t remember where you were seconds ago. 4. Punished for logging in - If you aren’t logged in and put an item in your cart, once you log in it drops the item out of your cart, and if it’s the last available it takes the app about 5 minutes to make it available again. 5. Constantly logging me out? - see point above for a wam-bam issue, but I’m asked to log in multiple times and often without even leaving the app. 6. Sometimes pages don’t load - they’ll show one picture, and nothing else on the screen for minutes before the user gives up. You have to go back and re-enter your selection for it to catch up. 7. The gap credit card returns do not show as negatives in the credit card detail - veeeeerry confusing. On a good note, I like the wellness features. That’s about the only positive change I can think of seeing in the past year or more.

The Athleta app has been easy to use for the past two years. I like how they update it every few weeks, keeps me coming back for more! I am able to see the all of the product available easily from my phone. I also like how I am able to switch between brands in order to view their products and love that I can use my Athleta card member rewards with any of them. The only complaint I have is that sometimes items that have been out of stock or are no longer in market will still show up on the SALE section. I do wish those items would be taken off the app in order to avoid disappointments or misunderstandings. Otherwise, great job!