What is Depends thinking

WhiteRabbit said:

I was on the road for most of the day today (having traveled home for the holiday weekend), so I stopped at several small-town Walmarts, hoping to find some bags still on the shelves. So much disappointment - across three states, and not a single bag left.

I've only got 4 individual Depends left. Guess I'll just have to hold on to them for special occasions

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That's so crazy. Where are you from? Pretty sure they're still on the shelves here in California

CVS91 said:

That's so crazy. Where are you from? Pretty sure they're still on the shelves here in California

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Maybe I just got unlucky with the towns I stopped in. I was traveling through Illinois/Kentucky/Tennessee, and didn't hit very many stores (it was already a long drive, so I didn't want to waste too much time). I'll probably go on a little hunt this weekend, check the areas around here.

I was surprised that I didn't even see the new versions stocked, just the pull-ups and adjustable briefs. Maybe the small-town thing backfired on me.

Kimberely Clark Corporation refuses to listen to us period plain and simple. I do think somewhere in the FTC laws they can be held to account for the false advertising and false claims of the Depend Fitted Brief "Maxinium Protection" AKA Overnight Protection Briefs. Wish there was a Attorney within the ADISC Community that would research this and tell ya what Id join a class action case if you do so bring one KC needs to be held liable and be made to admit the wrongdoing and admit they were wrong to move production to Mexico. Admit to everything and issue compensation in compensatory and punitive damages to each and every one of us who has ever used the product and be forced to recall whats on the shelves and forced to produce a product that is inline with the industry standard for a MAXINUM PROTECTION DIAPER! IE Abena X-Plus L-4 or Dry 24-7 ect ect . This would be earth shattering and would be a instant millions for a lawyer and each of us who would join the class.
Try getting a State Attorney General to take the case but since the State aint Incontinent they wont take on the business on our behalf sickening it is for me to say that gotta love our tax dollars wasted on a service we cannot use !

xpluswearer said:

Kimberely Clark Corporation refuses to listen to us period plain and simple. I do think somewhere in the FTC laws they can be held to account for the false advertising and false claims of the Depend Fitted Brief "Maxinium Protection" AKA Overnight Protection Briefs. Wish there was a Attorney within the ADISC Community that would research this and tell ya what Id join a class action case if you do so bring one KC needs to be held liable and be made to admit the wrongdoing and admit they were wrong to move production to Mexico. Admit to everything and issue compensation in compensatory and punitive damages to each and every one of us who has ever used the product and be forced to recall whats on the shelves and forced to produce a product that is inline with the industry standard for a MAXINUM PROTECTION DIAPER! IE Abena X-Plus L-4 or Dry 24-7 ect ect . This would be earth shattering and would be a instant millions for a lawyer and each of us who would join the class.
Try getting a State Attorney General to take the case but since the State aint Incontinent they wont take on the business on our behalf sickening it is for me to say that gotta love our tax dollars wasted on a service we cannot use !

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I agree. Same thing goes to GoodNites as well.

xpluswearer said:

Kimberely Clark Corporation refuses to listen to us period plain and simple. I do think somewhere in the FTC laws they can be held to account for the false advertising and false claims of the Depend Fitted Brief "Maxinium Protection" AKA Overnight Protection Briefs. Wish there was a Attorney within the ADISC Community that would research this and tell ya what Id join a class action case if you do so bring one KC needs to be held liable and be made to admit the wrongdoing and admit they were wrong to move production to Mexico. Admit to everything and issue compensation in compensatory and punitive damages to each and every one of us who has ever used the product and be forced to recall whats on the shelves and forced to produce a product that is inline with the industry standard for a MAXINUM PROTECTION DIAPER! IE Abena X-Plus L-4 or Dry 24-7 ect ect . This would be earth shattering and would be a instant millions for a lawyer and each of us who would join the class.
Try getting a State Attorney General to take the case but since the State aint Incontinent they wont take on the business on our behalf sickening it is for me to say that gotta love our tax dollars wasted on a service we cannot use !

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I'm not sure that there are really any grounds for a lawsuit here.

What gets me, though, is that they still haven't changed the information on the product page on their website. The photos and description still show the plastic-backed six-tape version, and nothing overtly acknowledges the recent changes made. You have to read through the recent reviews to see mention of the changes, and they (of course) have it set up so that the most favorable reviews show on the main page. Given the negative feedback concerning the recent changes, most of the front-page reviews are about the old version of the product. That's a pretty standard practice (showing the most favorable reviews), but showing the product as it was and not clearly stating the recent changes is definitely very dirty. It seems unlikely that this is just a simple oversight...

That being said, you can't purchase their products directly from their website, they just direct you to different retailers. The websites I've checked have all updated their product listings to reflect the changes made. While marketing the new version of the product behind the image of the old product is definitely deceitful and underhanded, the argument could easily be made that customers are responsible for making sure that they are purchasing the correct product. I'm just playing devil's advocate here. However, I've read many reviews from people that made purchases from pages advertising the old product, and received the new version without any notification. I would think that they, at the very least, would be entitled to some form of compensation. Taking into account the reasons behind needing/purchasing the product, and the massive inconvenience caused by receiving an inferior product, I could see grounds for some form of compensation for damages.

But I'm not an attorney, so I could be wrong.

WhiteRabbit said:

I was on the road for most of the day today (having traveled home for the holiday weekend), so I stopped at several small-town Walmarts, hoping to find some bags still on the shelves. So much disappointment - across three states, and not a single bag left.

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ahhh, but the question is, how much use did you get from your diaper while road trippin'?

Please tell us you didn't use those awful restrooms along the way...

I saw a thread on this about three to four weeks ago and I read through the Depends website then to see what was being said about the new product. The earliest reviews just got a canned response, at least now it seems like they have someone doing one of a few 'typical responses'. It sounds as if the 'focus group' they got together on these really didn't showcase a decent cross-section of the incontinence market. I'm wondering where and how they chose to find people to do their research with? They sure got a wrong segment and certainly didn't try a test market with the products before doing a nation-wide roll-out.

Apparently the changes were made sometime in March based on the website, and it looks like the overall rating is dropping rapidly on the product--they changed from showing the first number after the decimal to just a single integer number. Not surprising, they're getting about 10:1 ratio of people hating the new ones compared to old, and the rating when I looked several weeks ago was 3.2 stars, now it's 3.0. The earliest reviews of the product are from as far back as 2012, just the statistics alone say that the changes are in the last four percent of the time since reviews were started and those changes have killed 7% of their ratings. That means that the new product is not only horrible, but it's so bad that people are coming out of the woodwork just to say how bad it is.

We'll see how soon before Kimberly-Clark decides that it's time to do damage control and try to win back customers.

AnalogRTO said:

We'll see how soon before Kimberly-Clark decides that it's time to do damage control and try to win back customers.

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I still think they know exactly what they are doing. It's the same model that Coca-Cola employed (albeit that was an accident when they did it). It was the towards the end of the "cola wars" and sales of Coca-Cola were slumping. They changed their recipe and overnight people began to trash the new product in every available media of the time. The newspaper, talk around the water cooler, and even on the evening news. Sales REALLY began to dive and they immediately "re-released" the original recipe in a "new" can as Coca-Cola Classic. Coca-Cola not only regained their customer base but they actually saw a massive upturn in sales as customers returned. The end result was that Coca-Cola changed absolutely nothing and yet boosted their sales by doing nothing.

Depend is in a unique position to do this as they have been making cloth backed diapers for the overseas markets for many many years now. They sell a product that's already in production in a new market, that market cries out in rage against the inferior product and sales slump, they re-release the product they were already making as "new and improved" and re-establish themselves as a leading brand name in our domestic market.

The only problem with my theory is that the cloth backed diapers they sell overseas (in Korea at least) are vastly superior products to what they just put out here, they were even better than the plastic backs that they replaced here.

WhiteRabbit said:

Maybe I just got unlucky with the towns I stopped in. I was traveling through Illinois/Kentucky/Tennessee, and didn't hit very many stores (it was already a long drive, so I didn't want to waste too much time). I'll probably go on a little hunt this weekend, check the areas around here.

I was surprised that I didn't even see the new versions stocked, just the pull-ups and adjustable briefs. Maybe the small-town thing backfired on me.

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My local WalMart hasn't stocked the larger plastic backed Depends in years. They have had the smaller ones, but only a bag or 2 at a time. I've been buying mine in the larger size at KMart. They are the only store in town that had them.


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I was just thinking, a possibly more discrete way of picking up diapers locally is to get online on walmart.com and order them for pickup. Then you can go to the back pickup window (which is usually totally empty here) and pick up and pay for your order there. Only one clerk and no other customers in sight. Bag it and head out.

(and don't forget the Staples option)

bambinod said:

ahhh, but the question is, how much use did you get from your diaper while road trippin'?

Please tell us you didn't use those awful restrooms along the way...

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Unfortunately, I had to use those wonderful cross-country gas station bathrooms. I had meant to take a couple of my M4s for the drive back (I was traveling to visit family, so I didn't want to be padded for the trip there), but I completely forgot. Then I was hedging on being able to find a pack of Depends along the way, but no luck. And I don't do cloth-backed. Just can't trust them.

AAO said:

My local WalMart hasn't stocked the larger plastic backed Depends in years. They have had the smaller ones, but only a bag or 2 at a time. I've been buying mine in the larger size at KMart. They are the only store in town that had them.

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I noticed that too. The large Depends haven't been stocked in a long time (only available online, as far as I know). Thankfully I could fit in the S/M.

I kind of wonder if there's a correlation between the spike in dedicated AB/DL diapers in the past few years and the decrease in quality of medical adult diapers (Abena, Tena, now Depends, etc.)

Braves26 said:

I kind of wonder if there's a correlation between the spike in dedicated AB/DL diapers in the past few years and the decrease in quality of medical adult diapers (Abena, Tena, now Depends, etc.)

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The trends may coincide but I don't think there'a any link. Older products in the marketplace getting cheaper as they age is a pretty universal thing. The ABDL diaper market is still a growing market. Ther are a few players that have been in the market for awhile, but the niche hasn't been fully filled or even fully realized yet, so we're not likely to see any actual drpo in quality for at least a few years. Right now the ABDL crowd is floored by the variety and quality, and is willing to pay substantially more for it. Manufacturers are keen to spot this and cash in while people have their wallets out.

The adult/medical diaper market on the other hand has had a lot more time to level out, and so the existing suppliers are rounding into the stretch and looking to cut corners. There's few new customers to attract into the niche so there's no return on improving the product - they have to rely mainly on their existing customers to make money on. The only return left is to cut corners and try to stay ahead of the curve as people shuffle around trying to avoid or outrun the corner cutting.

And how many customers did Kimberely Clark loose to corner cutting? Id say tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of customers for what gain a 2 cent reduction in THIER costs! not a solid ethical business decision in my view. The old saying if it is not broke do not fix it sadly a bean counter at Kimberely Clark got a promotion for 2 cents I guess at what expense THE CUSTOMER !!!! Dayum sorry I am incontinent Kimberely Clark my fault my plumbing dont work anymore shame on me for needing dry pants to live my daily life!

Don't feel bad, yesterday I wore a seni cloth like cover diaper middle of the road absorbency, I taped it on tight, ran my fingers through the leak guards then went about my business. I did one wetting and continued working (I was on my tractor) a few min later I got up and felt like I had the half moon leaks in my jeans, sure enough I did. Just saying, cloth like diapers hate me lol

xpluswearer said:

And how many customers did Kimberely Clark loose to corner cutting? Id say tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of customers for what gain a 2 cent reduction in THIER costs! not a solid ethical business decision in my view. The old saying if it is not broke do not fix it sadly a bean counter at Kimberely Clark got a promotion for 2 cents I guess at what expense THE CUSTOMER !!!! Dayum sorry I am incontinent Kimberely Clark my fault my plumbing dont work anymore shame on me for needing dry pants to live my daily life!

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Rest assured, if it turns out to be a bad business decision KMB will undo it.

Uh its been 20 plus years they REFUSE TO LISTEN TO US ! They think they know better than ALL OF US! I give no sympathy to a business who is arrogant! They need to be held accountable for this ! Anyone who wishes to wear a inferior defective product deserves it ! Stop being so Dayum Vain ! What happened to June Allyson's saying that Kimberely Clark uses "You got a lot of living to do "! The Straight talking Youper from Michigan we have here says it best Better to have a wet diaper than wet pants. Guess there must be something in that Wisconsin Cheese or Bratwurst or beer that is making Kimberely Clark be stupid !