I just bought direct from A&F online for the first time. I certainly wouldn't recommend it to any other UK customers for the following reasons:
1) Return address is based in the Netherlands
2) Included return label (UPS) costs £9 which is deducted from your refund
3) If you damage this label (don't put clear tape over it - the text all disappears!) - A&F cust service have no way at all to send a new one. In fact I asked several unrelated questions and the stock answer was that their system doesn't allow them to do that. Pretty poor experience.
4) returning items yourself - cost me £17.99 to do this via the cheapest shipping aggregator I could find.
All this was after spending 45 minutes shopping the A&F mid-season sale on my iPhone (UK store in GBP £), only to be told at checkout that they couldn't ship sale items to the UK! really?! I had to then find a PC and do it that way - the transaction went through OK. So some issue with their systems and mobile devices. I did email them with this so that in case they weren't aware, they could correct it. After all, it nearly lost them a £250 sale if I hadn't persevered. I got a fairly standard email telling me to use a PC! duh!
All in all, a very frustrating experience. A&F really need to learn from some of their peers and offer a better customer experience.
UPDATE: I received a 20% off voucher (not as a result of this review though) for the problems I've had. So Abercrombie obviously want to provide a good experience, their just let down by their systems and excessive shipping policies/fees. If they can sort that, maybe they can provide a good customer experience. Upped rating to 2 stars.
