House of Brides Revisited

I have to touch on a topic that I have already discussed previously. I have already voiced a major complaint about House of Brides, but I must revisit the topic once again.

First let me say that the customer service at House of Brides is far from service. We ordered dresses from them in April, for a wedding scheduled on September 12th. Just before we ordered them, we found out I was pregnant. They told us our options were to buy a different dress or just as easily order 2 yards of chiffon fabric and they will do the alterations. They never stated that it would be additional to the flat rate of alterations ($80). So we opted for orderiing the extra fabric. Then, they ordered the dresses in the wrong color, and did not contact anyone to let them know. They simply shipped them back to the company that they ordered them from. The bride happened to call and check on the dresses to see if they were in, and only then was she told that they had ordered them wrong and that they had to re-order them. That left us with four weeks to get alterations done. So we took our dresses to someone else to see if they could be altered by them. The said they couldn't do anything because House of Brides did not order the liner that was needed to fix the dress. So we spent a week leaving messages with the alterations department at House of Brides to have the dress looked at. Fast forward to today, a mere 13 days prior to the wedding. The alterations department finally calls and tells me to come in at 10 today with the dress so they can look at it. Its fixable, but it will be $125. Plus they tried to claim that we never paid for the additional fabric, so they wanted to charge us an additional $50 or so bucks for the fabric, which has been paid for once already. We can't prove it though, because they did the order over the phone and never sent us the receipt they were supposed to send. So the bride, once before already had to pull her credit card statement to show that she paid for the fabric. So after some discussion about all the problems, the manager finally shows up to talk to us. (We'd been there for an hour and half already.) She can't seem to come up with any way to remedy the situation. She wants to know why didn't just order a bigger dress and have it taken in. That was never given as an option to us. So finally she tells us the $125 is a discounted alterations rate, and its the lowest she can go. Plus its due up front, and in cash! Has anyone ever heard of alterations being paid for before they were made? And in cash?! So the groom is with us, and he starts asking some simple questions about receipts and orders, and the manager says, I am done answering your questions. You need to leave. So he asks her another question, and she has an associate call 911 to have him escorted out of the store, but before the police can arrive, we exit the building, dress and fabric in hand. The police then go into the store and we are told by him that they no longer want us as customers, and that they refuse to do our alterations. The wedding is in 13 days! So now I am on a mission this afternoon to find a maternity dress that needs no alterations. Most of the bridesmaids have already had their dresses done, all but one I think. So our solution is to just go get me a different dress and leave it at that. However, I am so discouraged by the service there, that I want to do everything I can to make sure that no one I know gives them any business. I think I am a little in shock as to how they have handled everything. I could understand if the groom had yelled or threatened anyone, but he merely asked some questions, and now they are completely refusing services. I will be reporting this to the BBB.