Apr 16, 2014
I really hate David's Bridal. My rants about the handful of times I have entered their stores or been forced to buy things from them have been dramatic messes. The important thing to remember, is I am aware of how this company operates so I can better avoid the disasters.
Bridesmaids
I decided to bring my ladies to David's Bridal because they have a huge selection and a lot of their items are reasonable priced. Since I wanted to let my friends pick out what they wanted, it seemed the best option. Plus, it has been a couple years since I had been to one.
I hate everything wedding, by the way. I should mention that is not the fault of David's Bridal.
The Store
When I arrived for my appointment - the best part - it was crammed with brides and whatnots. I had to "check in" by giving the. . .uhh. . .hostess(?) all my personal information. I asked her why I needed to do that. She said for purchases. I said I wasn't purchasing anything. She said it was just easier. I asked if I would get any emails or spam from David's Bridal. She said no. I even opted out (on the iPad that sort of worked ok, I guess) while it required me to fill in my address, phone number, wedding date, name, cat's name, parents name, wedding colors, favorite Disney princess. . .well, you get the idea.
Then we stood around for a good 30 minutes. It wasn't too bad because I could catch up with my friends for a bit while we waiting for our appointment. I assumed one of the 3-4 clerks hanging out at the second podium talking would be responsible for that.
Nope. There was some guy who came over and directly solicited his services by saying, "Excuse me, who is the bride?" He was some type of DJ. He gave me his card - not even thinking that he would never be contacted because he interrupted me in the middle of talking without making it even a bit ok. Next, he insulted both me and my fiance when I said, "I'm not handling the music stuff, my fiance is. So, I can take your card but I'm not doing anything with it."
Of course, in the hell that is David's Bridal, he laughed and said how men are unreliable and I'm taking a big risk leaving it up to him.
If that his is impression of a grown man - he must have gotten it from himself.
That card went into the trash.
Remember Me?
After about 30-45 minutes of standing around, I went to podium one and asked if we could dare look at some dresses. Podium one lady looked at me as if she never saw me before and said, "Oh, yeah. Sure. You can do that whenever." She pulled over a clerk from podium two and they took us to a fitting room.
For the rest of the day, I ran back and forth to get sizes and dresses for my friends since the clerk assigned to us - a younger girl who obviously had the inner child knocked out of her years ago - was too busy.
We did find a dress everyone liked - score! So they I went to pick out colors. Purple, blue and green.
Oh wait - they don't have green anymore.
What? Yeah. In the color swatches you can pick, no one removed the colors they didn't have anymore. I picked wine and got us the HECK OUT OF THERE!
I did take pictures of the dresses, tags and SKU codes - everything - since one of my friend's couldn't be there that day. I knew I couldn't trust David's Bridal with that detail.
The Aftermath
So. .then there is this is the email sitting in my spam box:
Good thing I checked, right? This email was sent to me but it was not me who made the purchase, it was one of my bridesmaids - Cindy (she's pretty cool).
David's Bridal is one of the circles of Hell.
The letter I wrote:
Bridesmaids
I decided to bring my ladies to David's Bridal because they have a huge selection and a lot of their items are reasonable priced. Since I wanted to let my friends pick out what they wanted, it seemed the best option. Plus, it has been a couple years since I had been to one.
I hate everything wedding, by the way. I should mention that is not the fault of David's Bridal.
The Store
When I arrived for my appointment - the best part - it was crammed with brides and whatnots. I had to "check in" by giving the. . .uhh. . .hostess(?) all my personal information. I asked her why I needed to do that. She said for purchases. I said I wasn't purchasing anything. She said it was just easier. I asked if I would get any emails or spam from David's Bridal. She said no. I even opted out (on the iPad that sort of worked ok, I guess) while it required me to fill in my address, phone number, wedding date, name, cat's name, parents name, wedding colors, favorite Disney princess. . .well, you get the idea.
Then we stood around for a good 30 minutes. It wasn't too bad because I could catch up with my friends for a bit while we waiting for our appointment. I assumed one of the 3-4 clerks hanging out at the second podium talking would be responsible for that.
Nope. There was some guy who came over and directly solicited his services by saying, "Excuse me, who is the bride?" He was some type of DJ. He gave me his card - not even thinking that he would never be contacted because he interrupted me in the middle of talking without making it even a bit ok. Next, he insulted both me and my fiance when I said, "I'm not handling the music stuff, my fiance is. So, I can take your card but I'm not doing anything with it."
Of course, in the hell that is David's Bridal, he laughed and said how men are unreliable and I'm taking a big risk leaving it up to him.
If that his is impression of a grown man - he must have gotten it from himself.
That card went into the trash.
Remember Me?
After about 30-45 minutes of standing around, I went to podium one and asked if we could dare look at some dresses. Podium one lady looked at me as if she never saw me before and said, "Oh, yeah. Sure. You can do that whenever." She pulled over a clerk from podium two and they took us to a fitting room.
 |
| The dress is nice! |
For the rest of the day, I ran back and forth to get sizes and dresses for my friends since the clerk assigned to us - a younger girl who obviously had the inner child knocked out of her years ago - was too busy.
We did find a dress everyone liked - score! So they I went to pick out colors. Purple, blue and green.
Oh wait - they don't have green anymore.
What? Yeah. In the color swatches you can pick, no one removed the colors they didn't have anymore. I picked wine and got us the HECK OUT OF THERE!
I did take pictures of the dresses, tags and SKU codes - everything - since one of my friend's couldn't be there that day. I knew I couldn't trust David's Bridal with that detail.
The Aftermath
So. .then there is this is the email sitting in my spam box:
Good thing I checked, right? This email was sent to me but it was not me who made the purchase, it was one of my bridesmaids - Cindy (she's pretty cool).
David's Bridal is one of the circles of Hell.
The letter I wrote:
I can ever express my displeasure in David's Bridal enough to people. I try to temper it by saying you do have a warehouse sized inventory so you have selection working for you.
Three ladies came to your store and made substantial purchases and provided their personal information to you - they told they would be informed when their orders would arrive.
That was a lie - as I expected. I continue to get emails about their orders.
Why did this happen? Because while I have purchased nothing at David’s Bridal I still had to provide my information to your store for some unknown reason - even after the sales lady told me I wouldn't receive anything. Another lie.
And while I have opted out over four times from your emails (including when I had to “sign up” in store), I can’t believe you would treat your paying customers in such a way.
At this point, I will tell everyone it is not worth doing any business with David’s Bridal. After all, I now have to do YOUR job of informing YOUR paying customers that their orders have arrived. Good thing I checked my spam account and saved your store the embarrassment of getting calls from your customers wondering why their orders have not arrived on time.
But, it’s not really embarrassment. Your store staff is never informed or organized – nor have I ever been to a David’s Bridal in two states with one staff member who was remotely helpful. One did tell me she was “busy” and couldn’t help me pull dresses after she made a big deal about being our go-to helper. And another told me “oh sorry, yeah, sure” when I was standing around for an hour waiting for my “appointment” and finally asked if I could just take my ladies to look on dresses. Oh, and I have been openly solicited by your “partners” who rudely barged in on my private conversations to shove business cards at me.
Ok, that was not the letter I sent. That was too ranty. I think if you are going to complain, you need to be specific and address issues clearly that most upset you. I stuck with a much cleaned-up version that stuck to the fact that David's Bridal's customers were not being informed that their purchases had arrived. I did my best to do this.
This was my message:
Sent: Mar 7, 2014 10:59:36 AM
Subject: I want to provide some feedback about David's Bridal
Three ladies (my bridesmaids) came to your store and made substantial purchases and provided their personal information to you they were told they would be informed when their orders arrive.
That was a lie - as I expected. I continue to get emails about their orders.
In fact, I have purchased nothing at your company and opted out of getting any emails from your company three times. I never even wanted to provide my information to you in the first place and your sales lady easily lied and said it was required AND if I opted out I wouldnt get any mailings. I opted out three times and still get messages.
All your emails to me go into my spam. It was a random chance I even opened one of your emails in my spam-box. Good thing I did, else these ladies would never have known their orders arrived. I did the job that your store should have been doing.
I can understand your want to spam me, you think you can get money from me. However, I can believe you treat your paying customers in such a way. I have had to deliver messages on your behalf and now have had to apologize on your behalf
I will never purchase anything at you store. And you just lost three more people who never will, either.
I got this message back:
Hello Amanda,
Thank you for your recent inquiry. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you. In order process your removal request, can you please provide us with the following information at your earliest convenience?
? Please provide the first and last name (with spelling), you registered with
? Email address and telephone number utilized for the registration
? Please provide all telephone numbers you?ve been receiving calls on. For example, your home phone, cell, work phone numbers, etc.
? What are the telephone numbers of the incoming calls that have been calling you?
? Have you spoken to the contact calling you? If so, what did they offer to you during the call?
? Names of companies calling, and/or names of callers
We thank you in advance for your continued patience and for providing the additional information stated above, as soon as you provide a response we will work on resolving this on your behalf as quickly as possible.
The David?s Bridal online customer service team strives to ensure that each customer is completely satisfied with our assistance. However, if you have any questions or concerns, we are here to help and would love to hear from you! Please feel free to reply to this email or call us at 866-973-0238.
Thank you,
Laura
David's Bridal
E Commerce Customer Service
1-866-973-0238
As you can see - even David's Bridal's customer service or complaint department is pretty off-course. I appreciated the quick reply but not a form letter about me wanting to be removed from their mailing list. The real issue - from a customer service standpoint - really was there are customers not being told their orders are in and I am the only person who can tell them.
I replied with:
Unfortunately - I don't trust Davids Bridal enough to provide this information for two reasons:
1. This is a form letter. I don't see any real understanding of the issue or ability to correct it.
2. If I am actually removed, there is no guarantee anyone will be contacted when my bridesmaids dresses arrive. They have 14 days to pick up their dresses per the email, I can easily see them not being contacted and their dresses being re-sold or returned.
Thank you for processing my email and the quick response.
I guess Laura wasn't really "here to help and would love to hear from [me]" because I never got a reply to this. I suppose, at the end of the day, David's Bridal has the money and there is no point in living up to the jibber-jabber in their form letters.
Anyhow - stay away from David's Bridal if you can. In the wedding industry, it's normally hard to do that.
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2 comments:
I would love to run this company into the ground. I worked for them, and 6 out of the 9 places I've worked for have gone out of business or closed the branch I worked at. Sadly, my curse probably won't work on DB. Let me tell you, I've seen brides treated like garbage at the store I worked, and so was I. I worked there for four weeks and was fired two weeks out of training, with the excuse, "It's just not working out." Let me tell you, I made minor mistakes here and there, like any new employee would, but not enough to be fired. On day one, we were told, "Don't be afraid to ask questions." Well, I asked questions. I asked where the plastic garment bags were because I worked at the front desk most of my time, so when they threw me on register and I had to wrap a dress, I needed to know where the garment bags were. I was yelled at by my manager. She said, "You've worked here for two weeks and you don't know where the garment bags are?!?!" This made me afraid to ask any more questions. Then, on one of the busiest days, they threw me on register. Now, when we were training, the computers were down, so we never were fully trained on the register. Do you think it's a smart idea to put a new employee that didn't complete her register training on the register during one of your busiest days? Yeah, me either. The managers also made fun of me because I carried a notebook religiously. I wrote everything they told me down in it, and consulted my notes if I was unsure of anything...which to me, looks like an employee who is serious about her job. Well, they made fun of me for "always writing in my notebook". Also, when it came for my lunch break one day, another employee missed her lunch and was starving. I told her to take my lunch and I'll go when she came back. Well, then a rush came in and I couldn't leave. When it finally slowed down and my stomach started to eat itself, I asked if I could finally take my lunch. I was told I couldn't because it was an hour and a half from closing. FYI, it's illegal for any place of business to deny an employee a break, NOT MATTER WHAT THE CIRCUMSTANCE. Even so, after the store closed and was a complete wreck, I scarfed down a snack and stayed to help the consultants (I was customer service) put the store back together. I was then yelled at by my manager for not clocking out and leaving because MY JOB was over. Sorry for trying to help my fellow employees so your cranky butt can get out of the store a little earlier. How dare I be so selfish!!!
Then one day I came in, and I was finally given my permanent name tag. That was the day I was fired. I'm sorry, but if my job was in question, why would you give me my permanent name tag? Isn't that like saying, "Here's your name tag! You're an official employee now!"? Also, before I clocked out that day, I was working at the front desk. Fifteen minutes before my shift was supposed to end, the manager said, "We'd like to speak with you in the break room." I replied, "Okay, I'll be there in a minute." She said, "No, come now, Margie is coming to cover the desk." Needless to say, I did not listen to her. Do you know why? On my very first day, I was instructed, "NEVER, leave the front desk unattended." So even though my boss told me to come now, I decided to follow the golden rule and wait until Margie came to relieve me. Guess what? Margie didn't show up for FIFTEEN MINUTES. That desk would have been left unattended for FIFTEEN FLIPPING MINUTES. And then I was fired. You think that ended there? Nope. I tried to complain to corporate, but nobody actually works at corporate. It just an automated system that shuffles you to voicemail after voicemail after voicemail. Then a few months later, when it was time to do my taxes, I didn't have my form from them. I went to the store and asked the manger that I needed to speak with her about a tax form. She said, "I'll be with you in a minute". She made me wait for over AN HOUR AND A HALF and when she did finally come to talk to me she said, "We don't handle that here; you have to call corporate." Couldn't you have told me that in the first place or were you just trying to f**k with me some more?
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