I have to start by saying this has nothing to do with quality of the products which are actually excellent. My recommendation would be to go to a UK outlet that stocks this brand and buy from them if you want Smartwool without the hassle of the horrific return process when buying direct. Hence my rating.


Long story short we started our return process at the start of April and after 2 failed returns got Smartwool to agree to fit the bill and organise the 3rd return attempts since we followed their advice on the last attempt. This at least was fair of them. This attempt was successful but they got our parcel in July and we were told we’d get our refund in 14 days and nothing. I contacted them again, it’s been refer to finance and nearly 2 weeks later still nothing. I can only hope they process our return or might need to escalate.

The long version:

The returns process is not easy and you’re responsible for paying the return postage which isn’t ideal but I accepted this fact. The information given on their site isn’t correct and the information they require you to put on your return custom form isn’t provided with your items. We just filled out what we could with the information we could find on our order confirmation thinking that would be sufficient but it wasn’t. So our parcel arrived back with us after a month’s lounging in European customs. That was the first £20 wasted.

We contact Smartwool who we explained and they gave us the same
return advice as website only they provided us with missing info need for the form so we sucked it up paid another £20 and duly sent it for another ‘holiday’ to the Italian customs office and a month later it came back again.

We complained to Smartwool that we followed their instruction to a t this time and we felt it was only fair they organised and pay for a third attempt as we were out of pocket by £40 for £162 refund. They were fair and agreed to this and this attempt was eventually successful but this took til sometime mid-July. Then we finally got an email 28 July to say we’d get our refund in 14 days. That was a lie as by 14 August I’d received no refund so had to contact them AGAIN (who knows what number email this was and how much wasted time by this point). I asked them to give us our refund but of course it had to be referred to some ‘finance’ department and that was nearly 2 weeks ago and still nothing. It’s been a true test of customer patience. There processes need a serious overhaul if they wish to continue selling in an international market.