Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

2/3/17 update: For our whole adult lives, both my husband and I have had to pinch pennies, so we're hardly what you'd call "towel snobs"... we had our two sets of "good towels" which were used only for company (and to dry off our grandkids during sleepovers - they're the most important "company" in our lives!), and then there were the towels we ourselves use... and have been using for eons! But this year, I decided to splurge a bit in that area for my hard-working, blue collar hubby, googled "Egyptian cotton towels" (since I'd heard Egyptian cotton was the creme de la creme, with its longer, more dense threads/thread loops that pull moisture away from your body while trapping the warmth of that moisture at the same time) and this set of Pinzon towels popped up. Seemed a pretty decent price for quality, so I went ahead and ordered a couple of sets for him - he's a big guy, and was thrilled to have these generously sized towels after a long day! He could not care less about such things, but I loved the border designing. First, I wish I'd done a little more research before making the purchase. Had NO idea that Amazon had started its own private label lines years ago, including this Pinzon label (bed & bath, table top kitchen tools/accessories, indoor furnishings)! The others are Strathwood (outdoor furnishings/lighting), Pike Street (a "value" line of bed/bath), and Denali (tools/accessories), and apparently they made the move to try to give its customers great value at competitive prices. I knew the GSM (grams per square meter) number was important when looking at towels (i.e. 300-400 are pretty thin/light weight, 400-600 are considered medium weight/thickness, while 600-900 are the super absorbent, thick and heavy feeling towels that you typically find in upscale hotels or spas.) Since we don't often (NEVER!) frequent those types of places, I was pretty happy when I saw the 600 GSM number on these towels. When I went to write my review, I happened to see Pinzon's LUXURY towels - an 820 GSM for not too much more! Another thing to keep in mind when buying Egyptian towels is to make sure the label doesn't say "made with" Egyptian cotton... they also contain standard cotton and sometimes even polyester! The label should say 100% Egyptian cotton - these do. And I guess the other thing is that while Egyptian IS the "cadillac", Pima cotton is grown in America and creates a towel similar in GSM to Egyptian, and Turkish cotton is also a quality cotton - again, the key with all three (Egyptian, Pima or Turkish) is making sure it says "100%". I washed them a couple of times before using to get rid of the chemical smell and - while there was quite a bit of lint the first time around, there wasn't as much the second, and they certainly weren't falling apart as I'd read about in some of the other reviews. HOWEVER... after my husband began using them, I started noticing white splotches on the wash cloths as I'd also read about in other reviews (though NOT on the hand or bath towels.) We're now close to 2 months into use, with the wash cloths splotched all over the place but no splotches at all on the hand or bath towels! As I was folding laundry yesterday and shaking my head over the splotches, it finally hit me. My husband uses an astringent to clean his face of work grime when he gets home from work, using the wash cloths, so I believe it's one of the ingredients in the astringent that's reacting with the dye in the hand cloth! Depending upon the type of soap/cleanser or laundry detergent other reviewers are using, I'm betting it could be a similar reaction. But I'll tell ya - NONE of our old wash cloths reacted this way to his astringent, so whatever dyes they're using in the Pinzon plants much be pretty cheap. Amazon's attempt to to give its customers "great value at competitive prices" should not mean taking shortcuts that don't allow a product to perform under typical usage!