Customer Return Story – Prom Stinks

Prom season was always the worst! It was worse than the Christmas rush, it was worse than spring wedding season, and it was even worse than Black Friday!

Working in a boutique bridal and dress shop we deal with bridezillas and difficult customers all the time, but nothing like what we saw during prom season 2004.

It must have been a plan, or something premeditated, because it happened too many times to be a coincidence. After selling various dresses, renting tuxes, and even selling flowers at the front of the store, prom season was off to a great start. It wasn’t until the day after prom that we were blindsided by a huge swell of dress returns.

Shortly after we opened for the day we had three girls come in and try to return their dresses. Now, our policy is pretty lenient, and we’ll gladly refund a worn dress for store credit. This however, was not the case.

I’m not sure what happened the night before, but shortly after the girls walked into the store with the merchandise they wanted to return a wave hit us. It was the kind of toxic sewage smell can linger for hours. Not only were the dresses clearly worn, they hadn’t even bothered to clean them up!

Throughout the day, and into the next, we had 17 girls try to return dresses, most reeked of cigarette smoke, marijuana, and Axe Body Spray, but every once in awhile we’d come across a dress that clearly witnessed some bad decisions. The crazy part is, they were always shocked and disappointed that their wretched and smelly clothes were only now worth store credit.