A Lesson in Customer Service From a Customer
For the handful of people interested and keeping up, my wedding was absolutely perfect and gorgeous and amazing and…I'll stop now. Even the days leading up to the wedding were fairly non-stressful-except for The Great Tuxedo Fiasco.
Our wedding party was very small, so we didn't need many tuxedos. But the guys who did need them weren't all from the same area, so we chose a popular chain rental store. And now it's my job to tell everyone I come across never to make the same mistake.
Our first clue that we chose the wrong company came when I picked up my nine-year-old's tux three days before the wedding so he could try it on. I'm no expert in tuxedos, but I was pretty sure that his pants weren't supposed to stop six inches short of his ankles. And his vest came to his knees, which I also was pretty sure wasn't right.
I called the local store the next day and said there had obviously been some mistake and that I would be in that afternoon to remedy the mix-up. When I arrived, I first explained the too-short pants situation. The young woman minding the store was very perplexed that I hadn't brought my son in with me to have him re-measured. "It's Wednesday afternoon," I pointed out. "I'm pretty sure the state frowns on pulling kids out of school to go shopping."
Resigned, she looked up his measurements on the computer and replied that it appeared the pants should have fit. I assured her that they didn't. Then she asked, "Is he as tall as you are?" Taken aback, I said that he was a little tall for his age, but overall he was a normal almost-10-year-old. "Well, if the pants are six inches too short, he must be very tall," she persisted.
Wanting to put an end to what felt like an Abbott and Costello routine, I asked her to actually look at the pants I had brought back in. "Oh," she exclaimed upon examination, "these are way too short."
You don't say.
"The company must have sent the wrong size; we'll just re-order the right size," she said. For this grand solution, she had wanted my son to miss long-division? I don't think so. Despite what my kid thinks, he might need it someday.
She also admitted that they initially had ordered the wrong size vest, and she would rectify that as well. "That's why we have everyone try on the tuxes ahead of time," she explained.
Or-and this is just a thought-you could get it right the first time like most businesses have to. But maybe that was just the pre-wedding jitters talking.
Two days before the wedding, my husband and I went back to the same store to pick up his tuxedo and, perhaps not surprisingly, ran into another problem. When we ordered the tuxedo styles, Jeff and I had been very clear about wanting flat-front shirts, rather than the pleat-front. It's a matter of personal taste, but we really didn't like the pleated look.
And guess what showed up in the garment bag? Luckily, Jeff tried on his tux in the store, and we expressed our displeasure at this development. Instead of apologizing and offering to do whatever they could to fix it, the store manager went over-in detail-how they had done nothing wrong and that it must be our fault. Clearly, based on their track record, it couldn't have been their mistake. Clearly.
And all of the shirts could indeed be changed, but we'd have to pay to have it done. This, on top of the exorbitant amount we'd paid for the tux to begin with. And because some of the guys had already picked up their tuxes in other cities, it really wasn't a feasible option anyway.
More than the shirt switch, it was the horrific attitude of the manager-who, apparently, was unaware that our wedding might be a big deal to us-that managed to do the near-impossible: rile my husband. He's a very calm, unflappable man-which makes him a great businessman. But because of the galling circumstances in which we found ourselves, he became quietly unglued-the sight of which, truthfully, was so rare that it was actually kind of sexy. But I digress.
True to form, however, my husband soon looked for a positive spin. "It really doesn't matter what I wear," he reasoned, "because nobody will be looking at me."
Which wasn't true. I was looking, and he was gorgeous. TPW
Our wedding party was very small, so we didn't need many tuxedos. But the guys who did need them weren't all from the same area, so we chose a popular chain rental store. And now it's my job to tell everyone I come across never to make the same mistake.
Our first clue that we chose the wrong company came when I picked up my nine-year-old's tux three days before the wedding so he could try it on. I'm no expert in tuxedos, but I was pretty sure that his pants weren't supposed to stop six inches short of his ankles. And his vest came to his knees, which I also was pretty sure wasn't right.
I called the local store the next day and said there had obviously been some mistake and that I would be in that afternoon to remedy the mix-up. When I arrived, I first explained the too-short pants situation. The young woman minding the store was very perplexed that I hadn't brought my son in with me to have him re-measured. "It's Wednesday afternoon," I pointed out. "I'm pretty sure the state frowns on pulling kids out of school to go shopping."
Resigned, she looked up his measurements on the computer and replied that it appeared the pants should have fit. I assured her that they didn't. Then she asked, "Is he as tall as you are?" Taken aback, I said that he was a little tall for his age, but overall he was a normal almost-10-year-old. "Well, if the pants are six inches too short, he must be very tall," she persisted.
Wanting to put an end to what felt like an Abbott and Costello routine, I asked her to actually look at the pants I had brought back in. "Oh," she exclaimed upon examination, "these are way too short."
You don't say.
"The company must have sent the wrong size; we'll just re-order the right size," she said. For this grand solution, she had wanted my son to miss long-division? I don't think so. Despite what my kid thinks, he might need it someday.
She also admitted that they initially had ordered the wrong size vest, and she would rectify that as well. "That's why we have everyone try on the tuxes ahead of time," she explained.
Or-and this is just a thought-you could get it right the first time like most businesses have to. But maybe that was just the pre-wedding jitters talking.
Two days before the wedding, my husband and I went back to the same store to pick up his tuxedo and, perhaps not surprisingly, ran into another problem. When we ordered the tuxedo styles, Jeff and I had been very clear about wanting flat-front shirts, rather than the pleat-front. It's a matter of personal taste, but we really didn't like the pleated look.
And guess what showed up in the garment bag? Luckily, Jeff tried on his tux in the store, and we expressed our displeasure at this development. Instead of apologizing and offering to do whatever they could to fix it, the store manager went over-in detail-how they had done nothing wrong and that it must be our fault. Clearly, based on their track record, it couldn't have been their mistake. Clearly.
And all of the shirts could indeed be changed, but we'd have to pay to have it done. This, on top of the exorbitant amount we'd paid for the tux to begin with. And because some of the guys had already picked up their tuxes in other cities, it really wasn't a feasible option anyway.
More than the shirt switch, it was the horrific attitude of the manager-who, apparently, was unaware that our wedding might be a big deal to us-that managed to do the near-impossible: rile my husband. He's a very calm, unflappable man-which makes him a great businessman. But because of the galling circumstances in which we found ourselves, he became quietly unglued-the sight of which, truthfully, was so rare that it was actually kind of sexy. But I digress.
True to form, however, my husband soon looked for a positive spin. "It really doesn't matter what I wear," he reasoned, "because nobody will be looking at me."
Which wasn't true. I was looking, and he was gorgeous. TPW