Prom Dress Disaster

[Promdisaster]

Sorry, this might be long as to not drip feed. Apologies but could really do with some advice.

Ordered a prom dress for my daughter. Paid around one third deposit. Dress arrived in the shop the week before prom date. Went to try on and collect, but dress was too big. Seamstress made some alterations and said it would be done in time, they were working through alterations in order of prom date and to keep an eye out for an email.

Around lunchtime the day before prom, I got a text from the prom shop saying they were delivering the dresses and asking what was the latest time they could deliver that night or from what time the next morning, so I said up to 10.30pm and from 6.30am next morning.

Got a text early the next morning saying the seamstress had collapsed overnight and gone into hospital and they were trying to find another seamstress but not to worry, the dress would be there ASAP.

I told them I needed the dress by 4pm latest as daughter was having friends round to get ready/photos, then being picked up by another mum to go to a pre prom party/photos before leaving at 6pm to go to the prom.

Eventually, after a couple of messages and a phone call, the prom lady turns up with dress at 5pm. She asked my daughter to try the dress on to make sure it fitted. I was more worried that the dress would be too small now that it had been altered, so when she got it on and it wasn't too small I said it was fine and I could tighten it in with the corset . We were so relieved she had a dress. At that moment the other mum turned up to take them to the preprom party so the prom lady left.

The mum at the preprom party messaged and said the dress was too big and she had tried to pin it in but the dress was still gaping round the chest area and too big round the waist. My daughter spent the whole night miserable in a dress that was too big and is sad when she sees all the photos of the girls looking beautiful in their lovely prom dresses. My daughter is not a promzilla is is the sweetest laid back girl.

I have now had a phone message and an email asking for the balance. I really feel that I dont want to pay for a dress that doesn't fit and ruined my daughter's evening. I want to give the dress back so they can resell it.

IABU - yes the dress was worn
IANBU - it wasn't my fault, the dress didn't fit.

You can argue against the cost of the alterations but pay for the dress - you can’t have it, keep it, wear it and then refuse to pay for it.

It wasn't the dress OP ordered. ( it didn't fit )

It wasn't delivered on
time

no alternative to wearing it

OP wants to give it back

The convenient collapse of the seamstress is neither here nor there, and shouldn't be a factor in your complaint.

At that stage they could have said they couldn't fulfil the order , and refunded you, but unfortunately all businesses are under pressure and some are making poor decisions .

You had no choice to but accept an extremely late delivered dress. My mind has drifted to what the hell the next customer on the delivery drop must have been thinking!

Also, it is totally not unusual to find an item of clothing is not right in a longer time span than 5 minutes.

The very least I would do is use the template email someone has provided earlier..no need to be shitty about it, just point out you won't be paying full price for a dress that didn't fit, delivered very late which caused stress and compromised the event.

Problem is you accepted, tried on a confirmed then even used the dress.

Lets put in in another context:

Say you went to a resteraunt and ordered Steak well done but they took a while then brought you Steak medium raw and you ate it without sending it back because you where in a rush, when the waitress stopped by to ask if your meals ok you even said 'its fine'.

You dont get to get the bill and say 'Im not paying because it wasnt exactly how I wanted it'. You ate the food and have to pay for it.

She wore the dress. You have to pay for it.

Not at all comparable

by law they dont have to accept it back... OP viewed it and accepted it so even the 14 day cooling period doesnt count.

if you go in a shop and buy something too big thats on YOU not them.

She also USED it.

She didn’t have an option!

how many times do we think something is done in the panic of the moment and then decided it isn’t?

She thought it would be ok with the lace up back but it wasn’t - it wasn’t the right size - and those dresses have quite a bit of give in them to fit snuggly. DD was more concerned about getting her dress .

I think it’s appalling service and the dress should’ve been delivered weeks before to allow any additional alterations. A hour before the even isn’t ok.

Nothing to do with what happened with the dress, unless her DD ate the dress. The dress was not fit for purpose - the purpose being a made to measure dress which is supposed to fit - end of story. It doesn't matter if it has been worn once. If they'd had it for weeks before complaining, after having a non-pressurised fitting and agreed that it fitted, then the seamstress may have a point.

It's like with the steak analogy, the food arrives two hours late, the waiter stands over you pressurising you to try it and you eat it because you were starving but actually it was terrible. You definitely still have a cause for complaint!

Also it doesn't remove responsibility for terrible food from the restaurant or mean you can't complain because your server comes and asks you whether the food is ok about 20 seconds after you've received it and you have barely tried it yet. A lot of restaurants seem to think so. A lot of restaurants are wrong.

if you go in a shop and buy something too big thats on YOU not them

Different when it's MADE TO MEASURE and LATE.

It was not fit for purpose. Because it didn't fit. It was not delivered in a timely manner, it was delivered so late that they had no alternative but to accept it.

*Say you went to a resteraunt and ordered Steak well done but they took a while then brought you Steak medium raw and you ate it without sending it back because you where in a rush, when the waitress stopped by to ask if your meals ok you even said 'its fine'.

@mam0918
*

Not the same.

OP had no alternative to have a different dress this was the only one ( unlike a restaurant to order something else )

The shopkeeper was was putting on pressure to be gone before the dressed was properly checked
.
That would be like the restaurant packing up and closing before you'd had a mouthful.

It's so not like Judge Judy saying "you ate the steak"

I think what a lot of businesses don't realise as well is that there is a much higher standard when they are dealing with individual consumers than other businesses. Things like "buyer beware" "well you said it was fine when you bought it in the shop" and other things which may be acceptable between two businesses does largely not apply when you are selling to an individual customer.

*by law they dont have to accept it back... OP viewed it and accepted it so even the 14 day cooling period doesnt count.

if you go in a shop and buy something too big thats on YOU not them.

She also USED it.*

Sorry you've got this wrong.

Say you have a sofa delivered and the company don't give you time to unpack or check but you sign it's received, and then when you do unpack it's damaged. Are you settling for that?

Quite.

In this situation, delivered ridiculously late, put under pressure by the shop keeper who wanted to leave , having no alternative -

And therefore not delivered in a timely and appropriate manner -

don't think saying " it's fine" is the magic bullet for the shopkeeper, some posters seem to think it is.

@Rosehugger has explained it well.

Or indeed if you use the sofa and the arm falls off after a week. The shop can't say OH BUT YOU USED IT. That's not the point @mam0918

Thank you for all your helpful comments good and bad. I'm just taking my DM out for a birthday lunch then I'll compose an email to prom shop this afternoon.

So glad your daughter's prom dress got sorted, how stressful for her :(

I still remember my Mum getting me a lovely second-hand prom dress but because it had been used some of the gems on the front had fallen off so she took it to a seamstress to readd them and also add a few more to make it a bit 'glitzier'. They said it would be done on the day (we dropped it quite a few weeks beforehand and it wasn't a major job) so we picked it up and not only did it look like they'd done the bare minimum with the gems they pointed out a rip we hadn't noticed at the bottom and were like 'we noticed this, weren't sure if you wanted us to do anything?' 😕They had our contact details so why did they wait until we were literally picking it up on the prom day? Luckily it wasn't that noticeable!

OP YANBU to at the very least express how disappointed you are and just see what they say. Even if the dress had fit perfectly it must've been very stressful for you and your daughter to be left waiting until after the very latest you had requested it be delivered!

What else were they going to do, an hour before the prom?

Got a text ... saying the seamstress had collapsed overnight

Yeah, right

Some excellent suggestions for the email already, but don't expect it to make much difference. There's no way I'd be paying more, and the only thing they can really do is sue you - but I doubt they'll do that and risk the publicity

YANBU. Even if the seamstress was ill, it meant you didn't get the quality of product you paid for so shouldn't have to pay the full price when you didn't get it to the standard it was supposed to be.

i dont understand why you didnt just buy a dress that fitted your daughter in the first place 1

i dont understand why you didnt just buy a dress that fitted your daughter in the first place 1

ah that life with a teenager was so simple......

I'm wondering if 'collapsed' is the new somebody's died 😁

I agree with the PP who said you could negotiate on not paying for the alterations but you have to pay for the dress. Tbh you agreed to timescales that were too tight and because of that they left you till last. Then you agreed the dress was fine. If your priority was that the dress fitted properly then you should have made sure it did.
From their pov, you agreed a delivery timescale. You accepted the dress, saw your DD in it, told them it was fine. Your DD wore the dress, went to the prom and now you're saying the dress was a disaster and you don't want to pay for it.

The seamstress (apparently) 'collapsing' simply highlights why such jobs shouldn't be left til the last minute. Do you think they just didn't bother altering it at all? To those saying op should have realised the issue when dd tried it on - what other option did dd have at that point but to wear the dress anyway?

I would definitely be emailing a complaint to them and see what they suggest. I don't think you can expect a full refund as dd did wear it so they can't resell it as new - but certainly there should be no charge for the alterations and delivery.

@misteek
I don't understand what you mean? We went into the prom shop, tried on some dresses and ordered the one she liked in her size. When we went to collect, DD tried it on and it was too big, so seamstress put pins in where alterations were to be made.

I don't know about where you live, but in our local town there are only 3 clothes shops, none of which sell anything remotely suitable for a prom, so I would have had to order online anyway! It's not as simple as buying one off the shelf!