Are they Wrangler's by chance--DH bought a couple pair and I tried every thing vinegar - retayne- a gallon of bleach-my SIL tye dyes and I tried soda ash /ash soda =this is pretty close to what I used= I boiled these jeans for hours. They still faded. But the weird thing about it was the jeans never got any lighter in color After all this I did get a bit of an attitude I took the jeans back to the Sears store to lodge a complaint with the receipt - I told them what all I had done to try to stop the bleeding. To my surprise they gave me double the amount that he had spent. Plus a $25 gift card for their store.I was in shock that they did this after all the torture these jeans suffered.It was something about a dye vat malfunction. Take them back whether you cut them or not ..