After just seeing in Victoria's TR that she also recently had some big problems with After Hours, I thought I would start a separate thread about this here for everyone to let them know what happened with us. Anyone else can post their experiences too. That way, all of you still upcoming brides can be forewarned, and make decisions appropriately.
Our wedding was on October 29th. My DH bought his tux, so that, fortunately, wasn't an issue. Good thing too. He's a really big guy, and I have no doubt they would have really screwed his up, and we would have had major problems. Of course, that's one of the reasons we decided to just buy his tux in the first place! All the rest of the guys in the wedding party were (sort of) average size, so fortunately, we didn't have any major issues with the tuxes themselves. Just the service with the company. Which is a good thing. Because frankly, had there been any problem at all with the size of any of the tuxes where they would have had to go to the warehouse to get another one, we probably would have had a major problem, and may not have had a tux at all for whichever guy had the problem.
Two of the guys, my dad and my nephew, were in Indiana. Those two went off without a hitch. My mom took care of getting them in to an AfterHours in Indiana, getting them measured, making sure that store got the order in to the AfterHours in the Loop store in Kissimmee, and taking them to try on the tuxes on Friday before the wedding (26th). Evidently, there was a little hemming work that needed to be done, and one of the guys in the store did it within about 10 minutes.
Ok, all sounds great so far, right? If it had all gone this well, they would be getting rave reviews.
The only problem so far was that DH had planned on paying for their tuxes, but they went and got the tuxes on their own so fast, before we even managed to get into town, that they had already paid for them.
So, then came taking care of DH's side. We had two more on that side - his best friend, and his nephew. Now we had personally taken both of them and made sure they got measured and that the order got off to the store a couple of months earlier. We had also told them when we did the order, then later confirmed, that these guys were not getting into town until Saturday. We told AfterHours that their flight did not get in until the afternoon, and so we would not be able to come in until the evening on Saturday, the 27th to take care of fitting the tuxes and picking them up. That still gave one more day in case there were any problems, right?
DH's family being themselves, took FOREVER getting from the airport, got lost, and then, since they were running so late, the thing to do would have been to meet and go straight for the tuxes, but no, they ended up insisting on going to the motel and checking in first. All they did was check in an basically leave with us to go take care of the tuxes, so checking in didn't really matter, but....
Meanwhile, in all the phone calls back and forth between DH and his mom, she says something about thinking the place is closed. So DH tries to call AfterHours. And can't get through. The phone is doing really screwy things. We, of course, assume it's the cell phone, because when phones act screwy, it's always the cell phone, right?
Well, we finally decide that we don't have time to sit around trying to call and find out if they are open before we go over there, because we could waste all the time they are open just trying to find out if they are open, if you know what I mean. Besides, DH keeps telling me that he checked this all out ahead of time, made sure with them that we could pick the tuxes up on Saturday, and that they assured them that the store was open until 9 p.m.
I keep trying to call the whole way over. I finally get through, sort of. The guy on the phone tells me they're closed, and I about blow a gasket. The only problem is, I can't even have a proper fit at anyone, because the phone hangs up after about 10 seconds of conversation. And I can only get through about 3 or 4 times, and then everything goes back to acting very wacky again (not that it was acting all that normal when I WAS getting through). During what little time I was able to get through, what I was able to get out of them (the guy put the manager on the phone) was that they closed at 6 that day for a system upgrade, but it was ok, because they were open at noon tomorrow, and we could just come in then to pick up the tuxes instead.
Ummm... no matter that we had OTHER plans..... I said yes, and what if there are problems and the tuxes don't FIT? He said oh, well the wedding is Monday, right? So no problem, we'll get another one from the warehouse and you can just come pick up the other one Monday.
I yelled "No, we can't! The wedding is a 10 in the morning!"
About that time, the phone hung up again. After that, I couldn't get anything but a busy signal.
Well, as you might guess, by the time we got to the store, I was fuming and ready to tear someone's head off. There was a sign on the door. Sure enough, the regular hours were until 9, but special, just that day, they closed at 6 to do a system upgrade. But hey, we'll be open tomorrow!
We banged on the door awhile - after all, someone did answer the phone only about 15 or 20 minutes before. No one came out though. I still think they were probably still there...I think they probably needed to be there for the upgrade, and they just weren't about to come out and face an extremely angry bride. Worst part is, they could have handled everything in about 20 minutes, and kept the customers happy. But no......
By the way, it was about 8 p.m. by then. So it wasn't like we were pushing closing time or anything. We had every reason to expect that what we were told would happen. Especially since we had confirmed it. Told them all our dates and requirements. Made sure they knew when we would be showing up to pick up the tuxes.
So, we all had plans for the next afternoon. Instead, we had to march BACK over to AfterHours. Now granted, we might have had to go back anyway, if there had been a problem with the tuxes. But we wouldn't have ALL had to go. And it wouldn't have taken nearly as long, or at least shouldn't have, because they should have, by that point, had the tuxes pretty much ready to go. Instead, we were going over, just starting the process.
So, we get in there. Now you would think that since they had done this to us, we would be a priority. But no. We had to wait. There was a couple picking out tuxes and putting down deposits. Now actually, we got there first. The guys had to go in, try on the tuxes, and our nephew's sleeves were too long, so they had to do some measurement. Not only that, but really, I would say that DH's best friend's tux didn't really fit as well as it should have. Given more time, we might have tried to actually do something about it. But we didn't have the time to do anything about it. By the time they finished up and changed, and we got ready to pay, the other couple was ready to put down their deposits. So we had to wait until they finished so we could pay. Yes, I am saying that they could not handle taking both of our payments at the same time.
Not only that, but now we get back to that little "system upgrade". Now to you and I, an upgrade usually means making things better, right? Well, evidently to them, an upgrade means demolishing the computer system and making the phone system unusable. So we waited...and waited....and waited....and waited some more. It took them at least 40 minutes to take the deposit from these people in front of us. Did I mention that they started to take the deposit JUST as we were ready to pay. Yeah. Nice, huh?
We finally ended up sending all of DH's family on to do what they planned to do - they had tickets for some monster truck rally or something like that. We were meeting friends of ours that used to go to my church that now live down in Orlando at their house for lunch, and they were having the minister and his wife (the minister who was doing our wedding ceremony) to lunch as well. We had already warned them about the problem and that we were going to be a little late, so....
Well, after 40 excruciating minutes for them, it took another 30 minutes for us. DH sent me out to the truck, because he could see that I was about to kill someone. We made sure they knew how unhappy we were about them being closed the night before, about the fact that we had been promised that we would be able to get the tuxes on Saturday, about the fact that we'd been kept there when all of us had plans that day. We didn't get anything from them. And when I say anything, I mean ANYTHING. Not even as much as an I'm Sorry. Not so much as an acknowledgement that any of this was wrong. The most we got was a (IMO) rote "thanks for your patience" after they finally got done with the couple in front of us and got started with us. That was when DH saw the blood in my eyes and sent me to the truck.
What was the problem? Well, they had to process everything by hand. Evidently the "upgrade" had so royally screwed the system that they couldn't put anything in at all. Either that, or no one had been trained on anything yet, and so no one knew HOW to do anything on the system, even log in. I kind of suspect the latter myself, but who knows.
Not only that, but none of them really knew how to do the paperwork they had to do when they had to process payments by hand. So they were all fumbling around, searching everywhere for forms. And the last thing I saw before I finally walked out of the store was the woman who had helped our sales clerk with the payment forms for the people in front of us start walking him through the EXACT SAME PROCESS all over again. ARGH!!!!!!! He was acting like he had never seen it before, even though he had just done it. He was even having trouble finding the folder WITH the forms in it, even though he had just used it and put it away....and why the he!! he put it away when we were standing right there and he was going to need them again is beyond me.
Oh, and then there's what DH told me when he came out. He said that to speed things up, he ended up giving them HIS cell phone to call in and get approval on his credit card for the transaction. Because, after all, as I've said from the beginning, their phone systems were completely screwed. And they evidently had no clue what to do about it or how to handle anything. Fortunately, DH has a brain and got tired of standing there waiting for the clueless to try and catch a clue.
Ok, I think everyone can tell I got kind of frustrated.
We later found out that what was going on is that sometime last year, Men's Warehouse bought out AfterHours. This system "upgrade", we believe, was actually Men's Warehouse converting AfterHours over to their systems.
Now, I'm guessing at least some of you will probably say - ok. Well, that really wasn't the store's fault. They couldn't control when corporate dictated that the changeover would occur, or when corporate would close the store to do it. They also couldn't control what would happen to their systems. And if the corporate didn't get them trained on the systems in a timely manner, that's also not their fault.
Sure, none of that was their fault. But....that store was the one who took on having the tuxes ready for my wedding on that date. They had (or should have had) some appointment schedule that would have shown when they expected people to be in for pickups. As soon as they knew about the early closure that day, they should have contacted us to let us know about the problem, and to help us make arrangements. Even if we could have changed nothing about the dates when we did things, it sure would have eased up a lot of anxiety and anger.
They had a responsibility to us to minimize how much extra time we had to waste Sunday after what happened Saturday night, and they did nothing to expedite things for us. They should have been prepared for system downtime in order to get customers through without such a painful wait.
And how about a simple - I'm sorry for the inconvenience. It goes a long way. A discount for our time would go even further, but even a simple I'm sorry would have done a lot!
Never again. Never, ever, ever. In fact, I have to make up a list of things we have to do now. Things like combining our car insurance, adding DH to my health insurance, getting my name change done, things like that. Writing a letter to AfterHours/Mens Warehouse is at the top of the list!
Our wedding was on October 29th. My DH bought his tux, so that, fortunately, wasn't an issue. Good thing too. He's a really big guy, and I have no doubt they would have really screwed his up, and we would have had major problems. Of course, that's one of the reasons we decided to just buy his tux in the first place! All the rest of the guys in the wedding party were (sort of) average size, so fortunately, we didn't have any major issues with the tuxes themselves. Just the service with the company. Which is a good thing. Because frankly, had there been any problem at all with the size of any of the tuxes where they would have had to go to the warehouse to get another one, we probably would have had a major problem, and may not have had a tux at all for whichever guy had the problem.
Two of the guys, my dad and my nephew, were in Indiana. Those two went off without a hitch. My mom took care of getting them in to an AfterHours in Indiana, getting them measured, making sure that store got the order in to the AfterHours in the Loop store in Kissimmee, and taking them to try on the tuxes on Friday before the wedding (26th). Evidently, there was a little hemming work that needed to be done, and one of the guys in the store did it within about 10 minutes.
Ok, all sounds great so far, right? If it had all gone this well, they would be getting rave reviews.
The only problem so far was that DH had planned on paying for their tuxes, but they went and got the tuxes on their own so fast, before we even managed to get into town, that they had already paid for them.
So, then came taking care of DH's side. We had two more on that side - his best friend, and his nephew. Now we had personally taken both of them and made sure they got measured and that the order got off to the store a couple of months earlier. We had also told them when we did the order, then later confirmed, that these guys were not getting into town until Saturday. We told AfterHours that their flight did not get in until the afternoon, and so we would not be able to come in until the evening on Saturday, the 27th to take care of fitting the tuxes and picking them up. That still gave one more day in case there were any problems, right?
DH's family being themselves, took FOREVER getting from the airport, got lost, and then, since they were running so late, the thing to do would have been to meet and go straight for the tuxes, but no, they ended up insisting on going to the motel and checking in first. All they did was check in an basically leave with us to go take care of the tuxes, so checking in didn't really matter, but....
Meanwhile, in all the phone calls back and forth between DH and his mom, she says something about thinking the place is closed. So DH tries to call AfterHours. And can't get through. The phone is doing really screwy things. We, of course, assume it's the cell phone, because when phones act screwy, it's always the cell phone, right?
Well, we finally decide that we don't have time to sit around trying to call and find out if they are open before we go over there, because we could waste all the time they are open just trying to find out if they are open, if you know what I mean. Besides, DH keeps telling me that he checked this all out ahead of time, made sure with them that we could pick the tuxes up on Saturday, and that they assured them that the store was open until 9 p.m.
I keep trying to call the whole way over. I finally get through, sort of. The guy on the phone tells me they're closed, and I about blow a gasket. The only problem is, I can't even have a proper fit at anyone, because the phone hangs up after about 10 seconds of conversation. And I can only get through about 3 or 4 times, and then everything goes back to acting very wacky again (not that it was acting all that normal when I WAS getting through). During what little time I was able to get through, what I was able to get out of them (the guy put the manager on the phone) was that they closed at 6 that day for a system upgrade, but it was ok, because they were open at noon tomorrow, and we could just come in then to pick up the tuxes instead.
Ummm... no matter that we had OTHER plans..... I said yes, and what if there are problems and the tuxes don't FIT? He said oh, well the wedding is Monday, right? So no problem, we'll get another one from the warehouse and you can just come pick up the other one Monday.
I yelled "No, we can't! The wedding is a 10 in the morning!"
About that time, the phone hung up again. After that, I couldn't get anything but a busy signal.
Well, as you might guess, by the time we got to the store, I was fuming and ready to tear someone's head off. There was a sign on the door. Sure enough, the regular hours were until 9, but special, just that day, they closed at 6 to do a system upgrade. But hey, we'll be open tomorrow!
We banged on the door awhile - after all, someone did answer the phone only about 15 or 20 minutes before. No one came out though. I still think they were probably still there...I think they probably needed to be there for the upgrade, and they just weren't about to come out and face an extremely angry bride. Worst part is, they could have handled everything in about 20 minutes, and kept the customers happy. But no......
By the way, it was about 8 p.m. by then. So it wasn't like we were pushing closing time or anything. We had every reason to expect that what we were told would happen. Especially since we had confirmed it. Told them all our dates and requirements. Made sure they knew when we would be showing up to pick up the tuxes.
So, we all had plans for the next afternoon. Instead, we had to march BACK over to AfterHours. Now granted, we might have had to go back anyway, if there had been a problem with the tuxes. But we wouldn't have ALL had to go. And it wouldn't have taken nearly as long, or at least shouldn't have, because they should have, by that point, had the tuxes pretty much ready to go. Instead, we were going over, just starting the process.
So, we get in there. Now you would think that since they had done this to us, we would be a priority. But no. We had to wait. There was a couple picking out tuxes and putting down deposits. Now actually, we got there first. The guys had to go in, try on the tuxes, and our nephew's sleeves were too long, so they had to do some measurement. Not only that, but really, I would say that DH's best friend's tux didn't really fit as well as it should have. Given more time, we might have tried to actually do something about it. But we didn't have the time to do anything about it. By the time they finished up and changed, and we got ready to pay, the other couple was ready to put down their deposits. So we had to wait until they finished so we could pay. Yes, I am saying that they could not handle taking both of our payments at the same time.
Not only that, but now we get back to that little "system upgrade". Now to you and I, an upgrade usually means making things better, right? Well, evidently to them, an upgrade means demolishing the computer system and making the phone system unusable. So we waited...and waited....and waited....and waited some more. It took them at least 40 minutes to take the deposit from these people in front of us. Did I mention that they started to take the deposit JUST as we were ready to pay. Yeah. Nice, huh?
We finally ended up sending all of DH's family on to do what they planned to do - they had tickets for some monster truck rally or something like that. We were meeting friends of ours that used to go to my church that now live down in Orlando at their house for lunch, and they were having the minister and his wife (the minister who was doing our wedding ceremony) to lunch as well. We had already warned them about the problem and that we were going to be a little late, so....
Well, after 40 excruciating minutes for them, it took another 30 minutes for us. DH sent me out to the truck, because he could see that I was about to kill someone. We made sure they knew how unhappy we were about them being closed the night before, about the fact that we had been promised that we would be able to get the tuxes on Saturday, about the fact that we'd been kept there when all of us had plans that day. We didn't get anything from them. And when I say anything, I mean ANYTHING. Not even as much as an I'm Sorry. Not so much as an acknowledgement that any of this was wrong. The most we got was a (IMO) rote "thanks for your patience" after they finally got done with the couple in front of us and got started with us. That was when DH saw the blood in my eyes and sent me to the truck.
What was the problem? Well, they had to process everything by hand. Evidently the "upgrade" had so royally screwed the system that they couldn't put anything in at all. Either that, or no one had been trained on anything yet, and so no one knew HOW to do anything on the system, even log in. I kind of suspect the latter myself, but who knows.
Not only that, but none of them really knew how to do the paperwork they had to do when they had to process payments by hand. So they were all fumbling around, searching everywhere for forms. And the last thing I saw before I finally walked out of the store was the woman who had helped our sales clerk with the payment forms for the people in front of us start walking him through the EXACT SAME PROCESS all over again. ARGH!!!!!!! He was acting like he had never seen it before, even though he had just done it. He was even having trouble finding the folder WITH the forms in it, even though he had just used it and put it away....and why the he!! he put it away when we were standing right there and he was going to need them again is beyond me.
Oh, and then there's what DH told me when he came out. He said that to speed things up, he ended up giving them HIS cell phone to call in and get approval on his credit card for the transaction. Because, after all, as I've said from the beginning, their phone systems were completely screwed. And they evidently had no clue what to do about it or how to handle anything. Fortunately, DH has a brain and got tired of standing there waiting for the clueless to try and catch a clue.
Ok, I think everyone can tell I got kind of frustrated.
We later found out that what was going on is that sometime last year, Men's Warehouse bought out AfterHours. This system "upgrade", we believe, was actually Men's Warehouse converting AfterHours over to their systems.
Now, I'm guessing at least some of you will probably say - ok. Well, that really wasn't the store's fault. They couldn't control when corporate dictated that the changeover would occur, or when corporate would close the store to do it. They also couldn't control what would happen to their systems. And if the corporate didn't get them trained on the systems in a timely manner, that's also not their fault.
Sure, none of that was their fault. But....that store was the one who took on having the tuxes ready for my wedding on that date. They had (or should have had) some appointment schedule that would have shown when they expected people to be in for pickups. As soon as they knew about the early closure that day, they should have contacted us to let us know about the problem, and to help us make arrangements. Even if we could have changed nothing about the dates when we did things, it sure would have eased up a lot of anxiety and anger.
They had a responsibility to us to minimize how much extra time we had to waste Sunday after what happened Saturday night, and they did nothing to expedite things for us. They should have been prepared for system downtime in order to get customers through without such a painful wait.
And how about a simple - I'm sorry for the inconvenience. It goes a long way. A discount for our time would go even further, but even a simple I'm sorry would have done a lot!
Never again. Never, ever, ever. In fact, I have to make up a list of things we have to do now. Things like combining our car insurance, adding DH to my health insurance, getting my name change done, things like that. Writing a letter to AfterHours/Mens Warehouse is at the top of the list!
