My mother arranged for my baby to have his hand and foot prints cast in clay as my Christmas present, with the company who do this as a franchise in John Lewis. The women doing it were lovely, we chatted about his feeding difficulties as one had a daughter with some, joked about how vile one of the colours was (a puce - dirty pinky/brown that looked somehow surgical) and chose a soft grey as it was neutral, so it'd go with whatever house we live in in 2048. We left in a bit of a hurry as the next people were there. I've been dorkily excited about this ever since. We had our handprints done as kids too, and they're so tiny now it's almost impossible to believe we were ever that small, and he's growing so fast. So when they called after 4 weeks and said it was there, I was chuffed.
They'd fired it with that puce glaze. My cousin was here this weekend, and at first made soothing noises about how it couldn't be that bad, she was sure - then when she saw it her face fell and she just went, "yuck". It's that bad. I'm not into blue for boys/pink for girls, but ffs, who'd see a virulently pink colour selected for a glazed hand and foot print that had "Toby" underneath, and not at least query it? I'm ashamed to confess that I actually cried when I saw it - he'd had it done at 9 weeks, he's now 15 weeks and that tiny baby is gone forever. And it is so, so ugly. I can only think that the assistants wrote down the colour absent-mindedly, instead of the neutral one we'd picked because I snorted about how hideous it was and we were chatting about why she'd had to wean her dd at 4 months at the time.
John Lewis were really sympathetic and tackled the company, who insisted no mistake was made and refused to offer anything in recompense - no at cost (or even reduced) repeat session, nothing. JL were really apologetic and offered to pay half the full cost for us as they agreed it was a blatant mistake, but frankly I don't see why a co-operative company (in effect, every person who works there) should pay for a screw up by a third party, and I don't want to pay the sods whose fault it actually is twice, either! I feel really angry, as it's like they know mothers who want the things want them badly enough they will fork out for a second go if it goes wrong. They don't need to do anything to make it right - and it cost £60, ffs, it wasn't pennies. And pathetic as it sounds, I'm so upset. It was a really special momento of my DS when he was really teeny, and now it's just ugly. Still precious to me, but so fricking ugly.
Best part? They said, all magnanimously, that I "could of course keep the one I had." WHAT? There was no refund! Were they suggesting my mother was meant to fork out £60 for them to screw up the item, and then hand it back to them while they kept her cash - sounds like Two Left Feet.