Bridesmaid's Dress Episode II: Attack of the Macy's Bridal Salon

Bad customer service is one of my pet peeves. I just don't understand why someone who is being paid on commission thinks they have the right to treat you so poorly while performing their job. Case in point, my weekend experience with the Macy's Bridal Salon at Tyson's Galleria in McClean, VA.

Because I'm an out of town bridal party member (the wedding is in Florida), I had to take this piece of paper from the store in Tampa to a local bridal shop here that carried the dress designer's line and try on the dress and/or get my measurements. For those of you completely in the dark, you have to do this so the store that all the dresses are being ordered from can come from the same dye lot (manufacturing thing) and that they can order the size that will most closely fit your figure (yeah, right). So, last week I had printed off the list of bridal shops in the Northern Virginia area that carried the designer's dresses. I called all 6 of them and discovered that the Macy's Bridal Salon at Tyson's Galleria was the only shop that actually had the dress that we're wearing in stock. I wanted to find a shop that actually had the dress in the hopes of being able to try it on. Saturday, I went out to Tyson's Galleria, which is about a 20 minute drive for me (not so far around these parts). And found the dress in the color we're wearing. YEA! But it was a 6, so basically I could get one leg in but not the other. :) Therefore, I held the dress up to me and proceeded to find other dresses by the same designer in my size. Finding none in the 30 minutes I had been there and hadn't even been asked once if I needed any help, I stopped the next saleslady and said that I needed to have my measurements done.

That sales lady called some other lady from the manager's office out to do my measurements. The first thing this manager said to me was that she couldn't do my measurements unless the dress was being ordered at another Demetrios store in the chain. I wasn't told this over the phone when I was calling around looking for the dress to be in stock, but no worries...It just so happens that the store in Florida where Janet is ordering the dresses is, in fact, a Demetrios store. The paper I had said that. YEA! (Not so fast)

The lady did my measurements...Rather quickly and impersonal. I don't know about you, but this is not exactly a thrilling adventure for me to have someone wrap a tape measure around me and tell me things that even my bathroom scale doesn't have the nerve to tell me. And it's even less thrilling when the person is practically rushing as if I'm wasting her time even being in existence. When she finished the measurements, she went to pull the size chart for the designer out to match my measurements to the chart and looking at the piece of paper again she decided that I was NOT ordering from a Demetrios store.

I told the lady that I didn't understand since the paper said that we were ordering from them. She said this store in Tampa is using the Demetrios letterhead illegally to which I really wanted to stare her down and give her what-for for such a horrible accusation with no proof. She then proceeds to tell me that Demetrios doesn't have any stores in Florida and that the store I was in was the farthest south the stores went. I stopped her and said, "Ma'am, I don't know what to tell you but I talked to both my brother and future sister-in-law on separate occasions and they both told me that they found this dress at Demetrios." She wasn't convinced, but she pulled the size chart out and matched my measurements against her will it seemed.

I was totally thrown off at this point and really just wanted to beat my head against the wall because it just seemed so stupid. I thought well I'll give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe this store in Florida is new and she hadn't heard about it, yet. But the more I thought about it the more I just got angry about how she made me feel like I was wasting her time and that some store was performing illegal actions. I decided (in my head cause I was still at Macy's at this point) that I would do a little more research and figure this whole thing out. I got home that night and looked Demetrios up on the web...A beautiful thing that WWW is. And wouldn't you know it...That lady was wrong. See for yourself: Demetrios Locations This link shows the official Demetrios stores in the United States.

So, I got all energized and motivated and thought, I should pull a Julia Roberts Pretty Woman move...not the hooker stuff, but the Rodeo Drive shopping stuff. I felt like printing out that page of the US stores, taking it to the Macy's Bridal Salon, slapping it on the desk, and yelling "BIG MISTAKE; HUGE!" Again, wanting to give people the benefit of the doubt, I thought about it and decided maybe she meant that the Tyson's Galleria store was the farthest south MACY'S Bridal Salon in the US, which, in fact, it is. BUT, the Macy's company (Federated Department Stores) bought all the Burdines Department Stores in Florida last year and turned them into Macy's. So, while they don't necessarily have a bridal salon in them, they are still Macy's stores. And even though the Demetrios where Janet is ordering the dresses isn't inside a Macy's, it is still an OFFICIAL DEMETRIOS STORE. Oh yeah and it's been there since 2001.

I decided I needed to calm my anger. This seemed like the easiest way to get it all out and still voice my opinion about how poorly I was treated at MACY'S BRIDAL SALON in TYSON'S GALLERIA in McCLEAN, VIRGINIA. So, no Julia Roberts reenactment for me this time...Maybe next time it will be a scene from America's Sweethearts with John Cusack. But, seriously who wants to buy a dress for hundreds of dollars from someone who treats you the way that woman treated me when she was just taking my measurements and asserting herself to have complete and total knowledge of all Macy's and Demetrios operations throughout the United States. I decided that my "revenge," while not public, would come if she actually called the corporate office and told them that someone had come into her store with an "illegal" Demetrios measurement request form from a store in Florida...To which corporate would tell her, well yes we have TWO stores in Florida.