Abercrombie & Fitch Fusses Over 'Foreigners'

People who work at this store, can I say this, are idiots. Why would any foreigner buy it and plan to resale it overseas. FYI, these "ugly" (open to anyone's interpretation) t-shirts were sold 1/10th of the price overseas, especially in Indonesia. I was laughing so hard after reading it. I wished these people knew that people from overseas are often smarter.

CHICAGO - Just in time for the back-to-school season, the already-controversial retailer, Abercrombie & Fitch, is in the spotlight again. The clothes she recently bought from Abercrombie left local shopper Lacy Lupi happy, but what she and her mother went through to get them left them furious.

"We get up there and we've got two huge piles, and they start taking sensors off. Next thing I know they start whispering and then the manager calls me over and says, 'We have to speak to you. We have a problem,'" said Lupi.

That problem? They were "over the limit" and wanted to buy too much.

"She said, 'We've had a problem with foreigners,''" Lupi recalled. "'And since we cannot discriminate against someone from another country, we decided to put a policy in place that prevents anyone from purchasing more than 20 items.'"

The Lupis had 23 items on the counter. They charged 20. Then because they complained, the store let them pay cash for the three that exceeded the limit.

"They basically told us that foreigners were coming in and purchasing a lot of items in bulk and then selling them overseas for three times as much," said Lupi.

Abercrombie says the policy "is intended to protect our brands from the resale of authentic merchandise at inflated prices through non-company owned stores and internet auction sites."

On eBay alone, there are thousands of Abercrombie listings for women's clothing.

"It just makes no sense to me," Lupi said.

Source: WMAQ-TV
August 14, 2006