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Vent: Appalling Customer Service aside, I bought a dress.

So I don't post very often, mostly lurk and comment here and there but thought I would share. Mainly just to vent some frustration.

I live in a remote northern Canada location and there isn't a dress shop anywhere close by. So my FI and I arranged vacation time to coincide with Canadian Thanksgiving and headed to our home town (where we are getting married) to visit and get as much wedding planning things done as possible.

Since we were on a time constraint I needed to buy the dress during the appointment. I didn't have time to boutique hop etc. As this trip was going to be the last trip down until the spring as its just not worth braving 7 hours in the snow to come down. I had made an appointment at Davids Bridal thinking they would have the biggest selection in my price range.

I had chosen 7 dresses ahead of time to try on. They had 2 of those in the store. They gave me an ipad to check off dresses i wanted them to pull and out of those dresses they had 1. So kind of a pointless method of choosing a dress in my opinion. My 'consultant' had 3 other brides booked at the same time as me and I barely saw her. (Thankfully my mother and sister were able to pull dresses for me).

After choosing a dress, we were supposed to pick bridesmaid dresses, which we had indicated when booking the appointment. The consultant comes over to tell me that it is now past closing time. They had apparently changed the store hours. That week. And didn't tell us. I tried to remain calm and asked the lady why she didn't give us any warning as to the store closing as my girls could have easily tried on dresses while I was trying on mine and she said 'oh I just figured you could come back another day to do that" I explained that I had drove 7 hours to be there and that I would like them to 'make this right' and the best they could do is squeeze the girls in later this week to come in alone. Because they were completely overbooked for the week. So I told them that we didnt need a consultant, just a dressing room because I didn't want to take away from any other brides time. And I just told my girls what colour I wanted and told them to get whatever dress they wanted.

So. pretty frustrating experience for sure, and just a heads up to other brides out there that 'booking an appointment' at Davids Bridal may mean that you are sharing time with 3 other ladies. I had actually originally planned on shopping by myself and I am so glad I didnt as I would have had no way to pull dresses or have help to put them on.

BUT at the end of the day. I got a super pretty dress and it was only 700$. So YAY! 
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Re: Vent: Appalling Customer Service aside, I bought a dress.

  • I feel like David's Bridal is really hit or miss. I had a good experience with them (but ended up getting my dress somewhere else), but I've heard tons of horror-stories about them not being helpful and even being kind of harsh to bigger girls that don't have as much of a selection available due to sizing. I'm glad you got your dress though and hopefully all your BMs get theirs as well!
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  • The David's near my house in NC is pretty awful. But the one where I got my dress, near my mom's house in VA, was incredible. I'm sorry yours was crappy!
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  • The one I went to in NJ was pretty good, but I was literally the only customer in the store.

    My one complaint was that the one dress I came in to see was discontinued, so they just had the one size, which I didn't think was the right one according to the measurements I had seen online.  So she SQUEEZED me into the 10 sample - I could hardly walk, but it zipped.

    So she took that to mean that was my size and every other dress was also brought in a 10.  For some styles it worked... for some, I couldn't understand for the life of me why she wouldn't bring me the bigger size I wanted to try!!

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  • I think I was mainly frustrated because I was so nervous about dress shopping to begin with because I really didn't know what I wanted because I really don't wear dresses. And I am super short but curvy so I had no idea what would look good on me. And being a 'planner' and being all organized and being told that they didn't have the dresses I had spent time narrowing down got my anxiety going as I thought that meant they wouldn't have any dresses I liked. 

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  • Yea I had a crappy experience with them, when I went. Glad you got to find your dress, though!
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  • I'm from Canada too and the Edmonton David's is AWFUL (don't know if that's the one you went to, but yeah.) I hated the whole experience so much that I just left, took my own measurements, and ordered from them online. I wanted a cheap dress and I didn't expect to be waited on hand and foot or anything, but it was pretty terrible even compared to, like, Forever 21 or something, haha.

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  • You probably came to the DB where I live.  They did the same thing to me - "my' consultant had 3 other brides. My Mom asked them why she even bothered to make the appointment if they were goign to book the consultants 3x over, and she got the death glare of a life time.
  • amelisha said:
    I'm from Canada too and the Edmonton David's is AWFUL (don't know if that's the one you went to, but yeah.) I hated the whole experience so much that I just left, took my own measurements, and ordered from them online. I wanted a cheap dress and I didn't expect to be waited on hand and foot or anything, but it was pretty terrible even compared to, like, Forever 21 or something, haha.

    Yup! It was Edmonton! If I was in town longer I probably would have upped and Left but I was leaving the next morning and didn't want to pay a lot either. And same thing, I wasn't expecting to be waited on but I just assumed that booking an appointment actually meant something. And that if they tell me to choose dresses off their ipad, that those dresses would actually be available.
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  • I've heard that DBs are franchised, so each one is independently owned. I had a really great experience at the one I went to (my consultant was above and beyond, and I was her only client). I'm sorry your experience was so bad--I've heard more than one bride make the same complaints, so I can't help wondering if there is some overarching "guide" that the corporate HQ gives out that suggests overbooking appointments in this way. It's terrible business practice.
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  • amelisha said:
    I'm from Canada too and the Edmonton David's is AWFUL (don't know if that's the one you went to, but yeah.) I hated the whole experience so much that I just left, took my own measurements, and ordered from them online. I wanted a cheap dress and I didn't expect to be waited on hand and foot or anything, but it was pretty terrible even compared to, like, Forever 21 or something, haha.

    Yup! It was Edmonton! If I was in town longer I probably would have upped and Left but I was leaving the next morning and didn't want to pay a lot either. And same thing, I wasn't expecting to be waited on but I just assumed that booking an appointment actually meant something. And that if they tell me to choose dresses off their ipad, that those dresses would actually be available.

    I wondered, haha. I know there aren't many locations in Canada and it seemed implausible that more than one would be that terrible...I'm glad you got something in the end but I'm not surprised the shopping was bad. But I like to think my experience had a silver lining, because there was better clearance selection online and I got my $600 dress (already super inexpensive) for $100. I tried on a few brands to make sure my measurements matched up with the size I thought I was and that was good enough, I guess.

    Trying to get anything at all to actually try on took me over an hour, too. It was awful.

    I think the worst part of my experience was the constant suggestions that I order a size larger in case I gained weight and needed alterations. The dresses fit perfectly, not too snugly, and I was just shaking my head. Nope, not giving any money to your terrible alterations department either.

    Good thing I had no princessy SYTTD fantasies, because I think I might have actually cried in frustration after that whole experience.

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