Living up in the mountains, sometimes we don’t have a lot of options for different services, things we took for granted whilst living in NJ. One of the things we had a hard time with was finding a seamstress to handle mostly minor alterations. There just wasn’t really anyone around. FINALLY one opened in town. Unfortunately, I recently had the absolute worst customer service experience and will likely not go back to her. She managed to make me feel like her absolutely least important customer, so if I’m that unimportant to her, I’d rather schlep and find someone who values my business a bit more.
That’s the short version. Long version behind the cut….
This wasn’t the first order we’d given her. When she was working on our first order, her dog got sick so it took her an extra week. Ok, I can understand that. Then the next order took an extra week because she got busy. When we dropped off the third order she said would take longer because it was prom season, and then it took an extra week after that! Next order was dropped off and she said that this one shouldn’t take as long as the earlier orders. But when I went to pick it up, she hadn’t even started it.
The last item I brought in was the jacket to a suit dress that needed the sleeves shortened and some darts put in under the arms. When I dropped it off, I said I absolutely positively needed it the following Friday, so I could get it dry cleaned before wearing it to an event. She said no problem. Needless to say, it was NOT ready on Friday and actually hadn’t even been started. (This was also when I realized she hadn’t started the last thing we dropped off.) On Saturday afternoon we get home to a message that she had finished the work, which would have been fine if I hadn’t gotten the message after the store was closed not to reopen until Tuesday. On Tuesday I go pick it up and don’t even bother to try it on but take it straight to the dry cleaner. Get home to the Husband and realize she did a half-assed job on the work for him (taking a pull-over hooded sweatshirt, removing the hood and creating a shallow v-neck, she only created the v-neck, which looked really cheesy with the hood still attached). I pick up the dry cleaning on Thursday and when I get it home don’t see anything resembling darts. (Gee, I’m so glad I had the forethought to have a second dress on standby for the event!) I go to try it on and nope, no dart. So I paid $30 for her to shorten the sleeves and stick a v-notch in a sweatshirt.
I’m absolutely beside myself. I alternate from wanting to just let this go and not go back to her, to wanting to go back and tell her why she’ll likely not see us again, but I’m afraid I will need her again at some point and don’t really want to burn that bridge. But really, tell me something shouldn’t take as long as it did before, then have it take a week longer than you tell me AND it’s not complete? AND you screw up something I tell you is urgent and important? That’s a pretty sure sign to me that you don’t value me or my business.
Argh!
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