Beautiful dress, appalling customer service
I had an amazing experience with Sandra, who’s sadly left. It seem there’s been a change in staff, and I seriously hope they’ve learned from the mistakes they’ve made with my dress.
In March, I went to a wedding fair that Katya Katya attended. I feel head over heels in love with a dress at their table, and made an appointment to try it the following week.
That day arrived, I showed up to the boutique with my MOH and we were told that unfortunately they’d lost the sample somewhere during the event breakdown. They said they wouldn’t be getting a new sample of that style, as it was part of an old collection they were phasing out. So I was left with no choice but to travel across the country to the only boutique that had a sample of that same dress. I tried it on and loved it as much as I thought it would, but as they were only selling off the rack I came back to Katya Katya to order it with a sleeve customisation I really wanted. Not having bought it from that boutique meant I wasn’t allowed to take a photo, so nobody’d seen me in this dress.
Fast forward to early June. I rang up to check in, and was told Sandra had left. The new boutique assistant told me that my dress would be arriving in early July, and I asked if we could push it out to late July as my mum and auntie who live in the States were keen to fly over for the fitting and see me in the dress for the first time. I told this to the completely unenthused new Katya Katya assistant who dryly told me the dress would be ready at the end of June or early July. I mean, I know that working in the wedding industry must involve forcing a lot of smiles but I felt like I was massively inconveniencing her to give her my business. She went ahead booked my appointment for the end of July so my family could begin making travel plans.
The day of the appointment arrives, and I’m sat at my hair trial about to go meet everybody at Katya Katya. I get a call from the same apathetic boutique assistant I spoke to previously, telling me that the dress never arrived. She blamed it on DHL and all but shrugged her shoulders. I explained that while delays are inevitable, they seriously dropped the ball in communications. Surely when the dress never arrived in early July as expected, that would have been the right time to find out what was happening and communicate those delays to me?
The assistant took no accountability and kept saying that they had no control over the situation. I was at the end of my tether trying to explain that it wasn’t about the delays but rather what terrible service it was to hide this fact from me, when they knew people were flying thousands of miles for this appointment. Instead, they hoped it would turn up and waited until less than two hours before the appointment to inform me it hadn’t. I said I needed to go tell my family and I’d ring back.
Finally I got a call from the new manager who actually showed some accountability. She offered a new veil or a belt(?) as an apology and I told them I never intended on wearing either. To their credit, they gave me a 20% discount. Ultimately, I didn’t trust them with handling alterations and asked for it to be couriered to me. It arrived crumbled in the bottom of the dress bag.
1 August 2022
Unprompted review
