Refund for prom dress service not carried out

[TheMeatyDrop]

DD prom dress, taken to alteration shop. Indicative prices are on website.

Dress hem pinned up, no other work needed on the day. Website says pinning is a free service. Also I requested a price for straps added for us to consider.

Got to till. Woman gestures card payment machine at ne & mutters the price. The cost of the hem is significantly more than the website suggested, the cost of straps has been added without informing or discussion at all about price.

I was shocked and queried this but was (looking back) rudely dismissed by the woman & felt pressured due to her tactics saying these prices were normal & we'd not find anywhere else decent now. Customers were queuing behind me in the small shop & their shop phone was ringing with only her at the counter huffing, I felt I was holding everyone up. Also conscious of my DD & wanting her to have a nice experience of prom prep.

I left the store & immediately felt sick like I'd been conned. The woman's manner was not pleasant. I took about 1 hr out to process then returned to get dress back & a refund. No work had bern carried out during this hour.

Woman refused a full refund. Claimed she had to keep some back for 'work done'. Only work done was pinning which website says is a free service & anyway she removed the pins before giving the dress back. I asked why she thought she could hold money back, she said because I'd wasted her time... yet SHE WASTED MINE!

I took what ££ I could at that point, but want to follow up to get the rest back. I wasn't given a refund receipt and in the horrible exchange from her to me & my DD during all this I forgot to ask. I'm still waiting on the refund to appear back in my accountbut assuming thats a standard refund processing delay. The original payment has been taken.

Thoughts on where I stand legally?

I can't find anything clear on this situation online. Things I've read cover faulty services. I can't see how she can keep moblney when no chargeable work was completed & the order was cancelled within an hr or so.

I don't know about being a wet lettuce and not being assertive.

However, to spend £100 extra for a dress for one evening and something hardly ever worn again if at all is something I disagree with. Single or low use clothing is a significant contributor to climate change.

Never mind the families who struggle to put food on the table.

I would consign school proms to history.

You should have just walked out when you weren’t happy with the price. Need to work on being a bit more assertive. There’s no way I’d pay for something if I’m not happy. Once they have your money it can be difficult to get it back as you’ve found. I think you as unlikely to get it back now from her. If however you used a debit card you could try a chargeback, or as the cost was £100, you may be able to claim the costs back via a section 75 refund.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/section75-protect-your-purchases/

Sounds like a good price, though I totally understand you would have been upset if it wasn’t what was advertised on the website. They should make sure their advertising is accurate. I’m not a fan of ‘prices from…’ for this reason as it isn’t clear what the actual price is likely to be.

You may be able to find someone cheaper but just to warn you that skilled seamstresses are expensive (as we should be, it’s not a simple job!) and likely to be booked up this time of year. I’m a bridal seamstress and I see a lot of botched jobs on bridesmaid dresses that brides bring to me in a panic after someone has hacked them for cheap.

They also shouldn’t advertise free pinning, it’s like ‘free postage’, it’s not really free, it’s built into the price of the rest of the service.

I hope you find someone who can sort it for you.

Companies mostly can afford to give 'free' services because they are priced into other costs, or cost almost no more than services they are already being paid for. If they are being paid for no services then there is nothing to price the 'free' services into. The price of the other alterations will cover the cost of pining. The price of zero that you pay for no alterations, will NOT cover the cost of pining.

Just like a lot of places will do free kids' meals WITH ADULT MEALS, because it will cost almost nothing to cook a small portion of food in the hot oven that is cooking the adult's meal. It doesn't mean that they could afford to cook a series of kid's meals individually with no other meals for free.

Bloody hell OP your post seems to have elicited all the awkward arses on MN to reply with a small handful of reasonable people who can read thrown it!

I find it odd/poor customer service not to have given you a quote, but I don't understand why they wanted you to pay upfront for hemming and straps when they had your dress. I.e. if you don't pay then they can recover their costs by selling the dress. I'd have expected they would give you a written note of the work ordered which included a description of the dress, the agreed price and collection date. You could then have chosen to pay in advance if you so wished.

The place being understaffed doesn't excuse poor service, but I'd have been more assertive about it. If you've not had something like this done before I can understand, especially if the one person was busy.

I returned a wedding veil because I changed my mind about the colour and style. The woman whose shop it was wouldn't refund me for the original veil even though I was spending hundreds of pounds on a dress from her. She was very unpleasant about it. Certainly put me off recommending the shop to anyone else.

Fucking hell

£100 doesn't sound too bad at all!

It's fairly common now for dresses to be either sold on via Vinted, donated to charity or given to schools for low income students...

Free pinning is a con - you have to pin clothing in order to mark where alterations are to be made they're not really giving you any free service, otherwise you could have taken the dress away with the new hem pinned. Very weird of her.

I think the bit that is deceptive on their part is the ‘free pinning’. What has basically happened is she started the job, then told you the price, and you changed your mind. She is charging you for the time she spent on starting the job. If you take the silly ‘free pinning’ bit out of your head, she is not being out of order. Lessons learnt on both sides really - they shouldn’t advertise free pinning without making the Ts and Cs clear (or really at all to be honest) and they should be transparent about pricing. You should have checked the price before letting her start. Pinning a dress like that isn’t particularly straightforward so I am not surprised she wants paying for her time.

I was expecting an actual extortionate amount. You’re not going to find much cheaper than £75 @TheMeatyDrop. That is reasonable for a two layers dress like that. You might get cheaper with someone not very good. What were you expecting?

Thickish sheen material is not simple and is difficult to hem.

You sound entitled. She didn’t waste your time. You wasted hers

You weren’t conned not sure why you needed an hour to process…? Website prices are an estimate, each dress will be different. She told you the prices, you paid, you changed your mind… all this drama over nothing.

The service was shoddy and disorganised.
You should have been given a breakdown of costs, was she even measured for straps ? then only when you were happy with plan and outlay do you agree to seamstress going ahead. You also don't usually pay until you're happy with alterations, possibly a deposit for a lot of work.

As you didn't say anything at the time the seamstress had pinned the dress up so you will be charged for her time not the actual pinning up, which will come out of your refund which can take up to 7 working days.

Unless you don't receive the refund then I would just forget it, use it to be more assertive in the future and find a new seamstress.

Ignore the haters on here, it only takes one to have a go then the rest pile on like mindless sheep.

What price did they advertise & what price did they charge?

I'm confused, you wanted the hem to just be pinned and your daughter to wear it like that without it being stitched? If so, why not do that yourself as there's no sewing involved, if you don't have the skills to do this yourself, why would you expect a professional to do it for free? Have you managed to find someone to alter the dress for at a cheaper price as £75 sounds reasonable?

I can't imagine many people will just ask to have the hem pinned then not stitched. It's odd to advertise it as a free service, perhaps they mean they're happy to work with customers until they're happy with the length, so if it needs repinning a few times there's no extra charge.

This. She quoted you a price and you accepted it (as you paid it). You can't blame then for that.

If it is different to what's on the website then I'm not sure where you stand. But ultimately she told you a price at the till which you paid.

As for getting the money back... I'm not sure how easily you'll be able to do that, especially if she claims she kept someone back (whether true or not). Ultimately I'd probably just let it go.

How did you pay? If it was a credit card they are really good at issuing refunds and taking up the issue with the retailer. I'd also write a scathing review on local FB pages / trustpilot etc and quote what you were expecting to be charged vs what they actually tried to charge you. You may not get your money back but it will make you feel better. Wonderweb is a fabulous product.

The pinning is free to paying customers...you not so you pay. You a cf!

Look at citizens advise website, consumer rights, when in doubt about a service you have paid for but didn’t receive , not gonna lie it’s a bit confusing what youv wrote so I’m going to assume there was miscommunication and you were not informed correctly, I would start with calling them to make a complaint and go from there, even if it’s regarding the terrible customer service skills cause let’s face it regardless, it’s not ok to talk to customers like that and as a business it’s their responsibility to make it clear to customers what’s what

Doesn’t sound good. I’ve had dresses altered only twice but it was reasonably cheap and the lady quoted the price to me verbally when I took them in to her. I then said yes, we sorted booking it in and that was that.

£75 sounds way, way above what I paid to have mine altered, and that was literally altering the actual size of the dress in both cases, not just folding up the hem and stitching!

Unfortunately the time to query it is before paying, but appreciate how painfully awkward that can be for some of us! Doesn’t sound like she’s very good at customer service though.

Can I just say that some of these responses on here are appalling!

Anyway regarding your rights ...

.Clear pricing and agreement
Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, a trader must make sure the consumer knows and agrees to the price (or how it will be calculated) before the service is provided.
If the shop added costs (like for straps) without informing or agreeing on the price, the customer may not be legally bound to pay that extra.

Cancellation before work is done
If the customer cancelled the order before any chargeable work was completed, they should usually be entitled to a refund.
A trader can only keep some of the payment if they have already started the work with the customer’s permission and have incurred costs.
Pinning, if advertised as a free service, doesn’t count as paid work.

Right to a refund
If no agreed paid service was provided, keeping money just for the trader’s time (especially when the customer acted quickly) may not be fair or lawful.
Also, the shop should have provided a refund receipt to document the return — it’s worth following up for this.

I am sorry that you have had such unfriendly responses to your post.

A seamstress will charge just as much if not more if your needing it at short notice.