Hello again. Here is one from my personal file on wedding salons cutting tags out the back of bridal gowns, bridesmaid dresses and wedding dresses. If you ever walk into a bridal store that does this, turn around and RUN. If they are going to hide the truth about who makes the dress, what else are they going to hide.
Follow my logic. Would you go and buy a car without knowing who makes it? Would go buy some new shoes without knowing the designer? How about a handbag or diamond ring?
Now I use these examples for a reason to make a point. You need to know the manufacturer of an automobile to know the exact specifications so you make a proper choice for a need. With shoes, you want to go with something you know that fits based on past experience. You pay for the quality you want in the shoes. If you were in a third world country, you would not care who made them. A handbag is typically a status symbol and you want to wear it for the name and pay for the name. If not, you can go to Walmart and get generic "A" purse for $10. You rarely know who makes a diamond ring, but it had quality testing done on it to know what you are getting. You know the 3 C's for diamonds.
Why do I tell you all this? Well, a wedding gown hits all of these issues before you can make an educated decision. You need to know the quality of the gown based on reviews of other who have bought from this designer. You need to verify the fit even before alterations and to make sure it will not fall apart due to bad construction. If you are going to pay over $1000, you may want the status of telling your friends that this is a Vera Wang gown. Finally, there is no quality testing of wedding dresses like in diamonds.
Bridal stores will give you all kinds of policy reasons for cutting out the tags. This is never encouraged by the designer. Designers spend thousands of dollars advertising their gowns in Brides, the Knot and other magazines to get the word out on their designs. This is all undone with a simple clip of the tag in the back of a dress. Why?
Reason 1: (Not as bad as you may think, but still wrong)
Many wedding salons that do this practice are frustrated with the interenet and their competition beating them out on price. They feel that if the bride loves the dress, they will pay anything for it and should not shop it around. This was not a problem before the information age and bridal salons are upset to not make the profits they did before. On a counter note, this is why so many of them are going out of business. The more informed the customer gets, the more they will go for the same prodcut at the lower price.
Reason 2: (Very bad and its very wrong)
The old bait and switch. You don't know what you are looking at it may be a fake. I have seen this more than you can believe in bridal salons in strip centers. Just about any store with no real name and just BRIDAL over the door falls into this category. No name, no tag, no sale.
As a final note, some bridal salons have made a bad enough image to chase brides to the internet and David's Bridal leaving the good stores to suffer the wrath. Know what you are looking at before you buy.
1 comments:
I ordered a Mother of the Bride Gown from Best Bridal Prices. Not only was the gown received nothing like the photograph, but the description of the gown simply stated silk.
The gown, when it arrived looked like a knock-off of the one pictured and the bodice and train were covered in a netting material of a color that did not even match the waist banding and was listed at the Party Time website (where they got the gown) as "lace".
Best Bridal Prices refused to grant a return stating that the designer was refusing the return and that their policy did not allow returns.
As it turns out, Best Bridal uses multiple retailers including Party Time. They are a shoddy website taking pictures from other websites and using them as their own. Then, when you place an order, they call the other retailers to actually make the purchase. They are simply brokers, not even the middle man!
Both Party Time and Best Bridal falsely represent their gowns. Their no-refund policy is used to guarantee their income at the expense of the customer. Any no-return policy means that the company knowingly sells shoddy merchandise and will not guarantee the quality is as described.
I filed BBB complaints against both companies as well as sent emails and made phone calls to the companies directly. In addition, Best Bridal is on the Bridal Black List.
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