Reader Brad says his friend was “shafted” by a bridal store in St. Louis, so she wrote to the local paper about her issue. The paper wrote up her story and is now asking readers to offer their opinion on the issue. Brad’s friend, Tia, went to a bridal store to buy a gown for her sister’s wedding. She was instructed by the bride to get a dress that was shiny and either black or red. Tia found a gown she liked and ordered it. When she got the gown, she looked at the tag and noticed that it wasn’t by the designer that she thought she’d chosen. When she asked the store what was up with the dress, they told her that the store ordered another dress because they thought the one she’d chosen wouldn’t “work for somebody of her size.” This, of course, made Tia cry.
Now she wants a refund of half of her costs but the store says no. They’re offering $75 as compensation, which is not half of the $230.50 she paid for the wrong dress.
On that day of departure, she looked for the tag, found it and noticed something odd. It didn’t say Bill Levkoff. It said Eden Bridal. Tia thought that perhaps Eden Bridal was part of the Bill Levkoff line. Maybe Eden Bridal did the larger dresses. So she went to the computer and looked up Eden Bridal. It did not seem to be connected to Bill Levkoff.
Had there been a mistake? Had she gotten the wrong dress?
She rushed to Ultimate Bride. If there had been some kind of a mistake and the seamstress had been given the wrong gown, would there be time to do the alterations on the right gown? She explained to the seamstress that they had been working with the wrong dress. The seamstress went to talk to the store manager. She came back and said, no, this is the dress we ordered for you. The manager didn’t think the other one would work for somebody of her size.
Tia started to cry. She took the dress and left.
She told the story to her mom in Iowa. It was humiliating. By the way, she now hated the gown. The sash was long and embroidered. Way too frilly. It wasn’t shiny enough. She called the store from Iowa. She spoke to the manager. I want my money back, she said. The store manager said she couldn’t do anything because Tia had taken the dress.
When Tia came back to St. Louis, she called the owner of the store, Ann Rafferty. She offered Tia a $25 refund, but overall, the discussion did not go well. Tia then spoke with general manager Richard Craig. That conversation was better, but resulted in the same $25 offer. Tia asked for half her cost back. In all, including shipping and alterations, she had paid $230.50. Craig continued to offer $25.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is asking readers to decide what should happen. What do you think?
OK, jury, you decide the Case of the Wrong Dress [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]
(Photo: Getty)
More From Consumerist
-
Chargebacks: Protecting You From Scammy Online Sellers
-
Sesame Street Issues Cease & Desist To Sellers Of Sexy Big Bird Outfits Because That’s Just Wrong
-
Perhaps You Would Like To Dress As A Sexy Banned Boozy Beverage For Halloween
-
Walmart To Test In-Store Lockers For Pick-Up Of Online Orders
-
Why Won’t Old Navy Exchange My Jeans That Won’t Fit?
she’s probably a size 6 or something
either way, i’m really starting to hate the retail fashion industry. i’ve worked in it for years (now i’m in restaurants. w00t.), and i always liked helping people find the exact thing they’re looking for. but most of the sales people are grossly obsessed with image. they just talk about how fat the people in the store are, or how fat they are, or how fat another employee is, etc.
i’m sure the person who did the ordering was having a “fat” day so they had to take it out on someone who maybe had confidence in their shape.
@no.no.notorious:
Size 6 ? did you see the photo of her ? more like size 26
@Copperplum: Which has exactly what to do with the subject at hand?
Since you think it’s OK to make snide comments on people’s size, how broad are YOU across the beam? And no anonymous internet fudging now.
If the store’s excuse was that the dress she ordered didn’t come in her size… how in the world did she just pick a dress? I don’t go into stores and find something that looks nice on the rack and order it without trying it on. She must have purchased the dress without trying it on, because there wouldn’t have anything to try on – the store shouldn’t have ordered her a different dress, but they should’ve explained that the one she liked didn’t come in a size larger than X. Personally, I’d never just pick a dress and order it, but they should’ve told her that it didn’t come in a size larger than ____.
@IHaveAFreezeRay: Bridal shops don’t give you a choice. The bridesmaids dresses (and wedding gowns, for that matter) are there in one or two “trier” sizes, and if you’re any other size, you just have to kind of hold it up and guess (or, if you’re too small, stand inside it and have two friends pull it back around you).
And Bill Levkoff, as stated above, comes into sizes basically up to infinity. (My friend who chose Levkoffs had maids ranging from a size 2 to a size “8 months pregnant” and it was one of the lines with the largest range of sizes. The upshot was that it looked rotten on most of us, but oh well. It’s a bridesmaid’s dress.)
@Eyebrows McGee: I guess my difficulty in understanding why she wouldn’t try on a dress first was that I used David’s Bridal (bane of any bride’s existence) and they had dresses in every size up to 24 in their stores. One of my bridesmaids was a size 18 and was able to try on several dresses, including the one she ultimately chose to wear. Cost was one of the reasons why I chose David’s Bridal, but also their availability of try-on sizes was another. It’s not enough that a dress fits, it has to be comfortable and it has to be flattering, hide the areas you want to hide and highlight the best features. I’m a firm believer in working as a group, rather than the bride leads the pack and the bride gets the only say. I originally wanted my bridesmaids to wear the same dress – but it turned out that two of my bridesmaids looked much better in one dress, and the third was not comfortable with that dress. I guess I could’ve insisted, but she wouldn’t have been happy, and I wouldn’t have been happy because she wasn’t comfortable, so I compromised. And everyone had a good time, and wore comfortable dresses.
@jurijuri: The article doesn’t say that the dress didn’t come in her size, it says that the manager made a subjective determination that the style she chose wouldn’t work for her size.
In her shoes (if I weren’t a trembling 18 year old) I’d tell the manager he had three choices: 1) full refund 2) chargeback 3) small claims court.
If I want to pay good money for a dress that’s going to look like crap on me, that’s my right. Does anybody stop people from buying stirrup pants or short-alls?
She absolutely deserves a full refund. First they had no right to make that call, especially since they violated the contract inherent in the purchase – she paid for dress A, they took her money and gave her dress B. Second they insulted her needlessly. Third, from the sounds of it their decision went against the bride’s wishes and there was no time to correct the problem.
Also, Bill Levkoff makes lovely dresses which look very well made and flattering. Eden Bridal gowns look like cheap and frumpy – in a completely different league. So they didn’t even order something remotely comparable.
@Dr.Martha_Jones: which says something sad about the general low quality of bridesmaid’s dresses, since Levkoff doesn’t even finish the seams, and they’re still head and shoulders above a lot of the competition. And it’s still $6/yard satin.
full refund – it’s not the store’s concern whether or not the dress looks good on her. if she wants it and she pays for it, that’s what you give her. totally ridiculous. if they concede acting in error sufficiently that she deserves a 10% refund ($25), then she deserves a 100% refund.
from the article:
“Tia and the store manager looked at dresses and pictures of dresses. They needed something they could have by August for alterations. They selected something from the Bill Levkoff line. It was a black, shiny, strapless, floor-length gown.”
um.. so THE MANAGER who later changed the dress on her HELPED her pick the original dress and didn’t check to see what sizes it came in? regardless of opinion, if the appropriate size was available, that’s what they need to get.
the manager needs to be fired incompetency, to say the least.
FAQ from the bill levkoff website:
“Q: What sizes are your dresses available in?
A: Dresses are available in sizes 0 – 26.”
doesn’t say SOME dresses – the FAQ applies to the whole collection. and i scanned through the site to be sure and actually most of them appear to be listed as coming in up to a size 28.
and why would the folks at bill levkoff decline a sale because of the way a dress will look? i think tia needs to get bill levkoff’s people to back her on this because they lost a sale and somehow i doubt they told the store manager not to sell their product.
I don’t have a very popular opinion here, but I don’t think a full refund is in order. She obviously didn’t notice the dress was different through her fittings. She didn’t notice until she had to leave. Her first mistake was not checking the dress the first time she tried it on. By accepting the dress and then having it altered, she obviously had no idea it was different. She didn’t notice until she saw the tag. They are both at fault, however. The store should have never switched dresses without consulting with the customer. They should have called her to inform her that the dress she wanted did not come in the proper size (it’s not unreasonable to suggest a different dress when the only alternative is to make it larger).
Tia, however, may have a lawsuit on her hands if the store charged her the price for the original dress (assuming the new dress was cheaper). She’ll get at least a full refund if that’s the case (and she can prove it).
Let this be a lesson… don’t accept anything and alter it without making sure it’s the correct item. When I got fitted for a tux for my wedding, I made sure I questioned the suggestions of the girl at the tux shop. She was wrong on a couple points.
Also, to the guy who thinks that you can buy a suit and the store takes your measurements and tailors it for you… that doesn’t happen without you trying the suit on before they do any work. All brands fit differently and all people are sized differently. They only take your measurements to know what size you need. From there, they have to take pants and coats in differently for everyone, even if you have the same waist and chest size as someone else. No matter how good the tailor, they mark the alteration points while you are wearing the suit. To suggest otherwise is just silly. And it’s even more work to do a dress. She had to have tried on the dress before the alterations were made.
@RunawayJim: She didn’t notice until she had to leave. Her first mistake was not checking the dress the first time she tried it on. By accepting the dress and then having it altered, she obviously had no idea it was different.
Kudos to the OP for only asking for half her money back…sounds like she is taking some responsibility for not checknig the tag in the first place. If the switch-a-roo had been an honest mistake on the part of the store, compounded with her not checking her tag and not noticing the different dress, I’d be with you on not supporting a full refund here.
Unfortunately, the store did this deliberately, and basically tried to hide it. There was no “Sorry your dress couldn’t be ordered, but we substituted it with this similar one” phone call, or even any mention of the switch until she brought it up. That brings the switch into full-out fraud, which I think definitely means the OP deserves a full refund.
@RunawayJim: She obviously didn’t notice the dress was different through her fittings.
Tia admits to not knowing about dresses. You will find, I think, that most big girls do not LIKE dresses, because the majority of them made for us make us look like we’re wearing festival tents. Honestly, if it came down to it, if it was even just the same color and cut of dress, I’d have probably mistaken it for what I ordered, unless I looked at the tag.
bait and switch law?
@chemicalx9: Possibly
Charge!! (back)
I got married in St. Louis a year ago and used the Bill Levkoff line. There’s definitely a quality difference between the line she ordered and the line she received but considering she ordered based on a catalog and not from a fitting, this would be hard for a bridesmaid unfamiliar with the bridal industry to notice.
The Ultimate Bride has quite a poor reputation on a local St. Louis wedding planning community. They often provide poor service to a bride whose price range is lower than what they think she should be paying and they often provide better service to brides they find to fit that stereotypical bridal look.
St. Louis brides would be better with Bridal Connections, Clarice’s, Elite Bridal or better yet, ask someone you know.
Did she use a credit card? Get them to help.
At my job I have the power to make the customer happy. This is how you have happy customers. How is it that the owner of this business doesn’t understand that? Did she imagine this web page??
If they didn’t make the dress the OP originally ordered in her size, I can understand the shop ordering a different, but similar style of dress to show her. However, they most definitely have to inform the customer, and be prepared to eat the cost of the dress if she doesn’t like it.
Did she pay with a credit card? If so, CHARGEBACK! This totally falls under “Item was not as ordered”
She did not get what she ordered, plus she was insulted by multiple people in the store.
Full refund, PUBLIC apology, and a gift card to the store, in hopes they can retain a customer.
If not, EECB the execs untill something gets done.
If not, go to the media, they love this stuff.
Best of luck to you, OP.
She did not get what she paid for, end of story. Whether or not it would look on her was for her to decide and live with if it looked like shit.
Hey folks, I’m going to go take my break right quick and make a couple of calls to some local bridal stores to get rough prices on two dresses that are roughly the same design aside that the eden bridals is a bit more ‘frilly’ from what I can see. Just to see if there really is a bait-and-switch going on here since there is a lot of speculation, myself included.
Okay, the results are in.
I spoke with Angela at Bridal Boutique, and she was rather helpful on the matter at hand and she told me that for a size 18-28 style 7178T it’s sitting at ~$118 as the suggested price.
I then called and spoke with Tina at Christina’s and after a few minutes of being on hold while she pulled out the book for me, i found out that the Bill Levkoff style 936, size 18-28 will cost ~170
Looking online I found both dresses at a slightly lower price, but thats understandable since these are companies that have direct-drop more then likely right from the distributor so therein they can get the better prices on things, but you wouldn’t get the fittings as part of the deal, you’d have to find a seamstress to do that for you unlike the local stores which have them on-hand to do any alterations/fittings.
Right off to bat its obvious that there -is- a significant difference in price between the two($52). So it looks like not only did the management deal with it in the least proper manner, they also pocketed the additional profits. Not a smart way to do business.
@Sabbadeus:
Great detective work! I had been looking around online myself checking out that brand and pricing. Per my post below, it’s all about the Benjamins!
It was probably more of a case of the store getting a larger % of the profit from the wrong dress THEY ordered over the one the customer wanted. For $230, she could have ordered what she wanted from the JC Penney Bridal catalog for half the price and no humiliation.
If the original dress was unsuitable for her size, wouldn’t this conversation have happened BEFORE the order was placed? Again, I think this is about profits.
@zeitguess: You couldn’t be more right that it was all about the profits, and thats exactly the situation, if they knew the dress wasn’t going to be fittable to her, something should have been said instead of going and ordering something cheaper and pocketing the profits and telling her after the fact.
Definitely ask for a refund or something and possibly some kind of a reimbursement for the humiliation they incurred.
Girl should stay away from doughnuts and ice cream (see Krispy kreme story)
@chilled:
Is that really necessary?
@chilled: No, you should stay away from the public library computers.
Full refund because they didn’t deliver what she ordered, and it wasn’t even a mistake. They gave her something different, without her knowledge, on purpose. IANAL, but that sounds fraudulent to me…
Amen to what biardwallace said. Good job to those who looked up price differences as well. I’ve been through plenty of bridal boutiques as an “above average size” gal, with her “above average size” sister-in-law. In each and every case, if something didn’t come in our size, they stated it clearly and politely without making us feel like huge-arse cows. We have some sense, which we used, to determine whether or not something we tried on made us LOOK like huge-arse cows. This is where a bigger girls self-consciousness has a benefit — she’s not going to wear something she think she looks hideous in. Someone was just looking for a way to increase her profit margin to look good with the owner, and I wouldn’t doubt if this was the first time it’s actually happened. If it were me, I’d definitely be demanding that full refund and probably talking to the media (no fat girl’d ever shop there evAR!) as well as finding out what legal actions I could take. Then again, I have serious big-girl pride.
Are a lot of the folks saying only “half refund” either dudes or gals who have never been bridesmaids?
The deal is, your friend (or sister or whatever) the bride often picks out a dress for you, or a general color scheme. It’s just your job to get fitted for a possibly ugly dress your friend likes , or to find something innocuous that matches your friend’s color scheme. You’re not making the same kind of aesthetic purchase a bride is – often, you’re just looking for something that doesn’t suck bullets.
That’s how this young lady could not notice which dress it was after it was ordered and delivered. She wasn’t picking the dress of her dreams, just something that her friend would be OK with. And the store probably noticed that, which is why they thought they could pull a switcheroo.
It was unfair for them to do that without her consent. For all we know, the dress they ordered for her was more expensive than she initially agreed to.
Another scam that’s common with these shops is for them to order a much larger size than the customer needs, so that they can make money on alterations. All you need to do is pipe over to Indiebride.com to see how often this sort of thing happens.
She should have a full refund. It was not the product she ordered, therefore she has no responsibility. I would take this to small claims on principle.
Basic contract law. Restatement of contracts: if a consumer orders a good from a merchant, the merchant is said to have accepted the order and thus created a contract if they ship back either a complying or non-complying good. If they ship back a non-complying good (e.g. the wrong dress), they’ve simultaneously accepted the contract and breached the contract. The only way they can avoid a breach of contract if they could not comply with the consumer’s order is by sending the consumer a note offering the non-complying goods as a convenience (e.g., the consumer can send it back and owe nothing, or can send it back for the other dress, or can accept it if she likes)
Sorry. By shipping the wrong dress, the bridal shop created a contract and breached it. Judgment for plaintiff in amount of dress plus attorneys’ fees.
Full refund. I can’t believe they have the audacity to switch the product on someone and expect them to take it.
There are a LOT of women out there wearing clothes that don’t look good on them, but it shouldn’t be the store’s decision to make. They are making money, why should they care?
This should have more attention and punishment for the store. Can you imagine the backlash if they had said, “we didn’t think that dress would work for someone of your color”.
I agree that you should contact Visa or whatever card you use to purchase it and ask for a chargeback. They did not give you the product you bought, and instead replaced it with something else.
I say full refund. to the max.
OK, she deserves the full refund, but what is up with her crying and taking the dress? No, no, no. See, that is when you get the stony eyes and demand a full refund that instant. If not, call the police and make sure everyone in the store can hear that the word fraud, loud and clear.
@nagumi: but you don’t want to get their business back, after the manager insults you, do you?
@floraposte: doesn’t matter. If they couldn’t get it to her in time, she should have been notified and refunded. One lost sale, good customer service–oh, the horror. Better yet, give her similar looking options in that case. But, ordering something different without consent is not cool.
@chilled: is there a “report” button in the new comments interface that I’m not seeing?
@cerbie: People behave irrationally when they’re stressed or upset, or humiliated. Put yourself in her shoes – the staff of the store have told you a) they think you have no taste, b) they think they know better than you, and c) they think you’re too fat and/or ugly. I imagine Tia probably felt like she didn’t want to cause any more of a scene than had already happened. Plus, who wants to cry in front of complete strangers? The fastest way to get out of there was to take the dress and split.
That said, I’m totally on the side of ‘full refund’ along with some good-quality ‘humiliate the store owner for being a gigantic asshole’.
Isn’t bait and switch illegal? Cuz that’s what this sounds like to me. Worse since the usual bait and switch, you at least know before you paid.