Friday, August 27, 2010

Wedding dramz - over a year later

So I got married over a year ago.
Right after the wedding, a website called weddingwire.com was offering a free gift to those brides who reviewed a certain amount of their vendors. So when I got that offer I was all "Hell yeah!" because I had already reviewed most of my vendors on yelp.com, so it was easy to do a little copy/paste magic.

Let me digress for a moment and tell you about buying my wedding dress. In short, it was awful. In long:

Well, On my first foray into wedding dress shopping I stopped into a place really close to my mom's house. I was greeted by one of the sales ladies who was VERY nice. She explained that the dresses were simply samples and they were able to order different sizes and colors (if available).

Looking through the dresses there was an insane amount of variety, from flapper style, to big poufy princess dresses, they had it all. I explained to the 1st sales lady that this was my first time shopping and I was nervous, and she was very kind. She set me up with a fitting room and helped me and my family look for dresses.

Soon, however, sales lady 1 was STEAMROLLED by sales lady 2, who came by and absolutely took over. She started off by telling my mom that a dress she selected was ugly, and then proceeded to select and uglier one.
Once she entered the picture, the entire situation became stressful.

I found two dresses that I really liked, and sales lady 2 informed me that I really needed to buy one of them today (regardless of the fact that I told both of them that this was my first time out, I was just starting and probably not going to buy) because those were one and only dresses. She kept pressuring me into buying, so much so that I began to believe that there were only ONE of those dresses.
I soon realized that these are clearly samples, as most of them were covered in makeup, had broken zippers and were really shabby. No respectable bridal boutique would sell a dress in that condition.

At the end of my session, sales lady 2 asked me to come to the counter to fill out my information, I went alone and she lowered her voice and proceeded to scold me for not having an appointment. She told me that I would never get into other bridal salons unless I had an appointment.
I would have had no problem if EITHER of the sales ladies, right off the bat, had said, "You can browse, but you cannot try on without an appointment." But to reprimand me, after being incredibly rude, and condescending was too much. Also, the store was COMPLETELY EMPTY.

I vowed never to return...Unfortunately, I went back on my vow, and returned to buy the dress (I couldn't find anywhere CLOSE to my house that had it) But, I was mad about it.
The first time we didn't have appointment, but the second time we made one, specifically to try on the gown I liked. The only salesperson I talked to was actually the owner, who was VERY nice, but VERY distracted. However, I gave them a get-out-of-jail-free card because the day after, they were doing a runway show...or something.

The other girls in the shop, receptionists, assistants, whoever else worked there were SUPER nice. Many of them went out of their way to tell me how beautiful the dress looked on me, asking my plans for my hair. Many of them even made these comments after I had changed back into my street clothes.

So I buy the dress on July 1. Life is good. I purchased the dress the requisite 6+ months in advance (actually 10+ months), leaving plenty of time for alterations! They told me they were shipping in August and I would hear from them. August came and went, so I called them to inquire, and was told that my dress wasn't going to SHIP until February 13th, and I was terrified about how long will it would take to arrive. My wedding was May 30th, 2009. I BOUGHT THE DRESS IN JULY 2008. The only timing that was indicated to me was that they should ship in August, and no further updates.

The whole experience was sort of awful.
Back to present - this morning I get an email from weddingwire.com saying that my review is being disputed by the bridal salon, and that I needed to provide proof that I was INDEED a customer there. And I chuckled and was all, "whatever." Until I checked the other reviews on weddingwire.com.

Their average rating on weddingwire.com is 4.5 out of 5. Then I went to yelp and saw that their average rating there is 1.5 out of 5. Only 1 out of 13 reviews (including 3 of my own) gave them a positive review. So thaaaaaaaaat's a little fishy.
So, now I'm all agitated because of that fact that this bridal salon (with ATROCIOUS customer service) is probs trolling the wedding websites looking for negative reviews to dispute. I wrote weddingwire back to let them know that yes, I would provide proof of my business dealings and that I was concerned about the integrity of their vendor ratings because of the ability to dispute them, citing the discrepancy between the two review sites.
I will have JUSTICE...with a side of spaghetti.

This video never fails to bring me joy


Where things stand now is that I need to see if I still have the receipt from the bridal salon. But if I don't, my mom reminded me that I purchased the dress with my credit card - so I can get that statement and, BOOYAH, GRANDMA. Suck on that, bridal salon.

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