Lint from Melanie's new Target sheets
Reader Melanie wrote in with a frustrating experience she had at Target. And she is fighting it!
Hi Julia. I have a question for you. You talk a lot about Target. I am sure you are familiar with their Home products. My question is would you be surprised if you learned their sheets come from Turkey?
I bought a set of Target’s flannel sheets. I brought them home and washed them before I wanted to use them. I have a sheet cycle on my 2 month old washer and then I put them on sensor in my new dryer. Twenty minutes later I checked the lint tray as I expected some shedding being that the sheets were new. The tray was beyond being full. I emptied it and rechecked in five minutes. It was full again. I went back five minutes later and again it was full. I emptied it and started the dryer again. I checked again and the dryer didn’t seem to be warm. Well, the dryer broke. It was three weeks before the dryer was fixed because of getting a repair person out here and the part having to be ordered.
I contacted Target. I was told to save the lint so I dug back into the trash past the coffee grinds etc and was able to retrieve enough lint to fill up a freezer bag and that was only half the lint. I was told to hang on to the sheets while the company was contacted in Turkey. What? Turkey? Wait! I thought Home was Target and it was American.
Fast forward to yesterday. After several weeks of waiting and Target passing the buck on to their supplier’s insurance company in Turkey, I received an email back. Their sheets are top quality and have been tested. According to them I did not follow the manufacture’s recommendation on how to dry the sheets and it was therefore my fault. But basically because they are nice people they will send me replacement sheets. There was a mention about staining of clothes. Ah, I didn’t wash any clothes with the sheets.
Target sent an email back to Turkey asking what are the washing instructions. I sent an email quoting the instructions on the sheets. It shouldn’t matter…I have been doing laundry since dinosaurs roamed the earth. I am pretty upset, that Target keeps passing the buck to a company half way around the world. I would have expected good customer service to make me happy and then let THEM take it up with Home. Instead I continue to have to be further aggravated by the lack of accepting responsibility for obviously a bad lot of sheets. Did you know that Home is not really Target?
You are pretty consumer savy so I thought I would ask you. Target has not heard the last from me.
Melanie, I don’t think these sheets should have broken your dryer. Sounds like a real hassle. I had a red flannel sheet set that for YEARS created so much lint in the dryer cycle I was always surprised to find anything left inside the dryer. Guess I’m lucky they didn’t break my machine.
While I admire your tenacity, I’m not at all surprised that Target sells products made in another country. That is how they keep prices so low. Just like Wal-mart, Home Depot, and pretty much every other retailer out there. In fact, stores that sell products made in the U.S.A. often highlight the origin because otherwise shoppers assume the merchandise was made abroad.
I don’t agree with you that Target’s Home section is not part of Target. However, Target buys products from many different manufacturers. Sounds like what happened is Target passed you off to the specific manufacturer who made the sheets you bought in the Home section of Target. Either way, I can tell you are passionate about standing up for yourself. You’re not the first person who has a bone to pick with Target. Good luck!
UPDATE FROM MELANIE:
The company in Turkey sent me two sets of sheets. I am afraid to use them. I am now working with Target’s insurance dept. They have written the company in Turkey again explaining I did not wash other clothes with the sheets. I do not appreciate that Target is pushing everything back on the manufacturing company. I will wait longer and as I told the Target rep, I will write to Consumer’s Report Magazine. [The picture above] is about 1/3 of the lint that I retrieved from the trash.
Welcome to Bargain Babe! I’m Mara, and I’m so glad you’re here. I am an obsessive bargain hunter and penny pincher, and I am determined to live a full life without EVER paying full price.
I will not shop at Target because of there poor customer service. Macys has the same prices with excellent customer service. They get my hard earned money and time.
@Melanie, I am not surprised either that they sell items from Turkey. I do not buy items from foreign countries I do not like. Turkey is among them big time.
However I will buy from Italy, France, England , Germany and Switzerland.
I REFUSE to Buy From China, Korea, (north or south) Pakistan, (havent seen any but would not buy any) Mexico, (although I do buy the Coca Cola from there, the U.S. sucks when making Coca Cola) I also try not to do business with any company who has shipped jobs overseas (YES that means when I get a new car it will either be a Toyota, Honda, or Ford).
I do batiking and dyeing of fabrics and I know before I do anything with the fabric I have to wash it to remove any stabilizers or artifical finishes so the dye will penetrate evenly.
I usually think I know what I’m doing but with something like this (a great company that sells the dyes) I believe I will take advantage of their many years of experience and read everything they write about what to do.
Sometimes the instructions went against common practice but definitely worked better.
Having learned from that, I now read the laundry instructions on everything and I find that some have changed. I know we didn’t used to be told to wash towel before using; we are now–and how to wash them.
I’m not saying I’m an expert (far from it) but I do have a more involved attitude toward the washing of fabric and fabric items (sheets, towels, etc).
The first thing I see here is that she put the sheets in the washer on the sheet cycle. I don’t know what that is but it could be quite different from what could have been needed for the first washing of the sheets.
She doesn’t say what the washing instructions were for the sheets–it could be the fabric sizing was somehow all removed from the sheets so the normal ‘shedding’ was turned into an almost complete loss. Some fabrics have to be washed to ‘set’ the fabric and her sheets could be like that.
I appreciate her willingness to follow up on this but I think that in NOT following directions she created the situation.
There is the specific warranty (whatever it was) and the implied warranty–which is usually based on the customer following instructions. We’ve all ready funny anecdotes about what’s happened when someone didn’t follow instructions. Now we’re hearing the not-so-funny side of a story.
Our time is part of the cost of any item we purchase: how much time will it take for us to use/maintain it? This is one reason I go to Amazon to read the instructions and reviews even though I may buy elsewhere (often, really).
If it’s on sale but the comments talk about how much work it is to clean (a small kitchen appliance) or how difficult it was to assemble—that will stop me from buying it fright there. My time is my money and how I ‘spend’ it is part of the overall cost of something.
To buy something and NOT read instructions is about the most opposite of frugal I can think of. It goes against the very core of frugal shopping, doing your homework (research) first.
Also: I agree with all your comments about where the sheets came from. She would not have bought them at the price they would have had to charge had they been made in the US.
Some of the finest (and budget priced!) flannel sheets I’ve ever had came from Spain.
I won’t do business with Target either. Their customer service is poor and their return policies are just ridiculous! Good luck!
@Gabriele, Spain!! Yes Spain!! I forgot to mention that I would buy stuff made in Spain also. They have very nice and well made products!
I have no problem with Target’s return policy in general–90 days is quite generous, and often I am not even asked why I am returning something. However, I also have had occasion to write to Target.com about an issue, and the written response is boilerplate and annoying.
Buy cheap, get cheap, and generally not made in America. That said, there are other countries that produce great goods as mentioned above.
The world is changing and we’re either finding ways to work with those changes or we’re standing staunch in our ways trying to fight the inevitable.
I have to respond. The sheet setting for washing is a warm/cold setting. Regarding drying I used wrinkle control because it is a low heat. The instructions said wash warm, tumble dry low. I think I followed the instructions. So tell me what setting would you have used?
OH and I forgot, once Summer and Fall hits I shop our local farmers market and buy everything from fruits and veggies to jams and jellies.
At least I know where they are made at.
@Melanie ~ We (husband and I) also recently bought new sheets. Actually, we bought two sets, both from BB&B during the January clearance. Good buy$. It was the first time we’d ever bought Egyptian cotton, 300 thread count, which I guess has significance, but not to me. But some “expert” recommended this on one of the early morning TV programs. Anyway, the washing instructions were the same as yours. However, I now wash everything in cold water (and use the Tide formula recommended by Consumer Reports, which we bought at Costco–the Tide, not CR!). Anyway, I laundered each set before using and had a reasonably small amount of lint in the dryer. Yet I can’t tell you where the sheets were made. And I was doing so well up to that point in describing my frugal ways (buying sheets on sale, using cold water, using CR’s recommendation for the detergent, and buying the detergent at Costco).
I certainly understand your frustration with Target. As the seller that supposedly values your patronage, Target should have refunded your money (if that’s what you wanted) and then dealt with the manufacturer on its own behalf.