Shame on you, J. Crew.

Since getting engaged I have had the good fortune to make some incredible internet friends.  (Shout out to Adriana who's getting married in two days!)  One of my new, lovely friends, has had a really bad experience that I wanted to share with you.  Like many other brides looking for something simple, elegant and not outrageously priced, she found her wedding dress at J. Crew.  She paid in full when she ordered it (plus, a dress for her shower, two pairs of wedding shoes and her five bridesmaids bought there as well). When it came in, she went to pick it up, a sales person told her they store it for free and suggested she leave it.  My friend lives in a small apartment and agreed.  When a bridesmaid cleaned out a closet and had room for her dress she went to pick it up and was given the same advice.

About a month before her wedding she went to pick up her dress, and get this, they had lost it!  Her wedding dress!  That they told her to leave there!  In her words:

"They sent it back to the factory. They called it unclaimed property. They said they didn’t know they had to get in touch with me. They didn’t have my phone number. It wasn’t their fault. They offered me a $25 gift card for my troubles.

I threw an epic tantrum in the middle of the store. A bridesmaid came down and held my hand. The staff promised me the dress would be in the next day by noon.

I take the next day off work. [My fiance] takes the day off work. We sit in the J. Crew and wait. And wait. Noon passes: NO DRESS.

The dress finally arrives about 2:30 in the afternoon. I got a discount on the dress (not yet applied to my debit card yet); my bridesmaids got a discount on their dresses and I got a $50 gift card. The kicker? When the new dress arrived I would have to PURCHASE THIS NEW DRESS and they WOULD REFUND THE EARLIER DRESS. The first dress got sent back and they never even bothered to see if someone might be out SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS."

 That was last week.  This week, rather than refunding her (because they charged her again when the replacement came in), they charged her card AGAIN.  She ended up paying THREE TIMES for her dress and is currently in the process of reporting them to her bank, Consumerist and the BBB.

I've got to say, I had kinda been a J. Crew fan.  If their stuff if your style, it really works.  But this kind of customer service?  They're opening up their first dedicated bridal salon in Manhattan next week and I'm just worried for all the people who could fall victim to their lack of coordination and apparently terrible accounting and customer service.  It all makes me very glass I picked out and took home my dress all in one go.

Please exercise caution if you're considering or planning to order your wedding gown (or anything else, for that matter) from J. Crew.

So, um, yeah.

Apparently Lincoln is home to Arbor Day, not Earth day.  (Thanks for that, Honey.)  Clearly you can see how interested I am.


Anyhow, the boy and I are off the visit Nana and Pops in Minnesota this weekend.  Should be fun.  And I get to get my engagement ring resized, finally.  Though I do fully admit to being a baby and not wanting to give it up.

I have all sorts of photos of fun things that you'll get to see either when I find my camera cord (uh huh) or my new (yay yay yay!), hopefully correctly functioning this time, Canon 20D arrives for me to redo the pictures.  Though I suppose that's also dependent on the giant rain cloud currently occupying the sky over the entire Midwest gets the hell out of here.