River Island

River Island is one of the more popular stores you’ll find on Princes Street, as well as at the nearby St James shopping centre. I tend to avoid going to these shops, as it’s not uncommon to see someone wearing what you’ve bought from them EVERYDAY.
However, I was really impressed with their summer range. I noticed it on a trip to Nottingham, and as expected, the clothes were quite identical back in Edinburgh. They were a combination of all my favourite things; wispy, feminine, minimalistic and mostly pastel coloured!
River Island is quite moderately priced, so whilst you may find a better bargain at H&M, it’s definitely not in the league of Top Shop.

Guys I’ve got a great idea. Trust me you’ll love it. What we’ll do is, we’ll take an ordinary decent shirt that most people would be happy to wear and put a massive, horrible design on the back that makes no one want it! Sounds great, I have an idea too — Do you like this cardigan? Sure you do, but you’d like it a whole lot better if I sewed half a hoody into it wouldn’t you?
I don’t get this place at all. They seemed to take perfectly reasonable clothes and ruin them. I mean, they’re truly horrible clothes. I’m reviewing this River Island in particular because not only are the clothes horrible in here, but the staff are horrible and the rubbish they sell is really disorganised and scattered all over the floor. I can’t see a reason for ever buying clothes from there. Maybe I’m just too old fashioned.

I can’t resist shopping, especially when there’s a sale on and River Island sales are one of the best on the high street with as much as 70% being taken off many items. I’m currently looking for a last minute holiday and as such, need some last minute summer clothes so I popped in here last week to see what I could get my mitts on.
Unfortunately, this branch is rather small and I seemed to have caught the tail end of the sale so the selection wasn’t really that great. Lucky for me though, they had plenty of my size left and I bought myself a new pair of summer shorts, a new bikini and a floaty, floral summer dress all priced at £7.50!
Although this branch in the St. James Shopping Centre is small, it still has a good selection of all the latest trends and is definitely worth a browse, especially if you’re a River Island Junkie!

I have a love/​hate relationship with River Island, with more hate than love.
If River Island is your style, then that’s great. But I find it a little overpriced for really rather chavvy looking clothes. They seem to sell a lot of fluorescent colours, let’s be honest who looks good in fluorescent green? Nobody! I have found the occasional nice item, but when I try things on I realise that they are so badly made that they just don’t fit properly.
The customer service is pretty shoddy. Somewhere up the management chain in River Island some uneducated fool has decided that Consumer Law does not apply and has advised the staff of this. For example, if you buy a pair of shoes in River Island and a week later there is a hole in the bottom this falls under the Sale of Goods Act for goods which are of an unsatisfactory quality, which means River Island have to give you a full refund. Well according to River Island they don’t because «they haven’t had any others back with that problem». I am amazed that one shop assistant knows which items are being returned and why within the whole company, I guess River Island employ Mensa members. My mum returned a watch which after two weeks, just stopped working. They told her she had to get it fixed herself and it wasn’t there problem. So I went in and Consumer Law-​ed their ass and she got a full refund.
River Island clothing is of such poor quality you need to learn your Sale of Goods Act to shop here.