Pulling Teeth

Just quietly, how long does it take to complete minor repairs and courier a damn dress? I know other people who have had perfectly pleasant experiences while arranging to purchase special items such as wedding dresses from interstate but I have to say that I’m currently Not Happy Jan. I put the dress on layby knowing that I would need repairs done on the gown and expecting that I would be able to go down in person to get it sorted. Events conspired against me however and I was left managing the whole thing by phone from home and it would seem that because of that, the whole customer service thing went out the window. I swear getting a straight answer out of the salon has been like pulling teeth. More trouble than its worth almost. Everyone was very polite to me on the phone of course but I just got the impression that the exercise of getting people to follow things up for me was as useless as tits on a bull.

I suppose I should have gotten an inkling when I rang up to ask a few questions about the veil. When I realised that the dyed veil was going to look quite horrible with the ivory jacket, I rang up to ask whether I could change my order or possibly remove my order after having put down a deposit. The concept of two separate scenarios was apparently too complex to deal with however causing most of their brain cells to run away and hide so they just deleted the order completely and sent me a new layby slip. As I never asked for this, I figured I could change my mind later if I really wanted so I let it go. Things just got worse when I needed the dress repaired. I needed to know how much the repairs to my dress would cost and in what time frame these could be completed. Namely whether I could fly down have a fitting, stay overnight and fly out with my fixed dress the following evening. If the repairs could not be completed overnight or if I could not fly down in person, I also needed to know how much it would cost to courier the dress. I needed the dress asap and I wanted the cheapest option. What I got was the run around.

You can’t talk to the salon about repairs because they sub-contract the work for their off-the-floor dresses to seamstresses. The seamstresses can’t tell you what needs to be done on your gown because the salon keeps it on site. Seamstresses will only quote on what they are told to so it is a fatal error to simply ask how much it costs to “fix” something. Just as an aside though, you’d think that they’d tack on stuff you didn’t really need to make money when you gave them free reign but that obviously didn’t happen. When they come back to you and you make it clear that you have other concerns regarding the dress, the whole process starts again. After you manage to approve the repairs, you get a new set of problems. You can’t pay the seamstress because she is sub-contracted by the salon. You can’t pay the salon though when they don’t know what the seamstress is charging you. I swear to god this process is driving me insane. I think I have it to the stage where it is almost sorted. It would just be my luck though if I get the dress couriered up here and it gets lost in transit!