Forever 21 Sent Free DIET BARS With Plus-Size Clothing Orders!

Apparently fashion isn’t for everyone at Forever 21 after all…

At least that’s what some customers are saying after receiving their online orders in the mail this week.

That’s because the fashion retailer apparently somehow got the notion to send a free diet bar to its plus-size customers!

Over the weekend, a Twitter user named @jessemarisaelao shared:

“my mom ordered some clothes from @Forever21 ‘s plus size collection and they sent a Atkins diet bar along with the stuff she ordered?”

Along with a photo for proof:

Forever 21 Atkins Diet Bar — (c) @jessemarisaelao/Twitter

And on Monday @melodycgreen posted:

Forever 21 plus size clothing diet bars — “Can we please get this trending? My friend ordered Plus Size clothes and @Forever21 sent her an Atkins Diet Bar! Called customer service and they won’t do ANYTHING.” (c) melodycgreen/Twitter

And…

Atkins diet bars forever 21 — Hey @forever21 do you include weightloss Atkin bars in all your shipments or just in the ones for ladies over 1X ?? / (c) @wisekatya/Twitter

Yeesh!

Sure, these can be seen as snacks — but they’re also meal replacement options for a very specific, super low carb fad diet based on what many see as dubious nutritional claims. The sugar is replaced with polydextrose and vegetable glycerin.

So yes, they’re very specifically for weight loss. And Forever 21 sent them to plus-size patrons.

Yet more users revealed the same thing happened to them — and they weren’t happy about it:

“Forever 21 really put a f**king diet bar in with my plus size clothing order…I f**king can’t. ?”

“bought a swimsuit online from forever 21 and they sent me an atkins bar along with it lmaoo thank u for reminding me that i don’t have a beach ready bod”

“Thanks Forever21 I have received my order of 5 items from the plus section…..oh and this #atkins bar that slipped in there. I don’t take kindly to people telling me how to live my life.”

OK, so WTF is going on?? How could a company possibly be so tone deaf as to do something obviously offensive to their plus-size customers??

Well, the answer is they didn’t target their plus-size customers. The diet bars were sent out with every order placed over a specific period.

This was confirmed by several online commenters who said they had ordered clothing which wasn’t in the plus-size range but had still gotten the bars and later by Forever 21 themselves.

The company released an official statement as the story began to pick up traction:

“From time to time, Forever 21 surprises our customers with free test products from third parties in their e-commerce orders. The freebie items in question were included in all online orders, across all sizes and categories, for a limited time and have since been removed. This was an oversight on our part and we sincerely apologize for any offense this may have caused to our customers, as this was not our intention in any way.“

So…

Was this a case of people jumping to conclusions? Being too sensitive?

Well, it looks like it. Many complaints were definitely under the assumption the bars were only being sent with plus-size orders, as some kind of message.

On the other hand, you’d think someone in the chain of command would have taken issue with the optics of sending weight loss products out with clothing orders — to women of any size, frankly.

What do YOU think??

[Image via Forever 21/Twitter.]