My mother and I went with my sister-in-law to find her bridal gown. First of all, the entire sales staff completely ignored us as she was trying on gowns while all the other brides received tons of attention. My SIL did decide on a gown; however, since Group USA is an off-the-rack store, the gown she had selected had been tried on many times and was absolutely filthy, with a lot of the embroidery coming off (in my opinion it didn't just look "tried on," it looked USED, and by someone with very poor hygeine). It was the only gown in her size, so the staff explained that the normal procedure was to have the gown cleaned and repaired by their seamstress. My SIL is from another country and wasn't completely fluent in English at the time, and she had a hard time understanding this; she wanted a new gown (I don't blame her). The staff insisted that the gown would look new after cleaning, and that their policy was that they would only order a new gown if there wasn't one in her size in stock in any of their stores. After arguing for a while they finally agreed to order one for her.
When we went to pick it up a couple of weeks later, it was in worse condition than the first gown! Not only that, but they tried to hide this (they actually tried to stop me from checking it before we paid) and they were prepared to let her pay for it and take it home in that condition! After demanding to know why they had ordered ANOTHER used gown, the manager's response was, "Well, this only took two weeks to arrive. You should have KNOWN it wasn't a brand-new gown; that would have taken months. And we can't clean and repair a dress that fast either, since you wanted it in two weeks you should have known that wasn't going to be done." We actually had NOT told them that we needed the dress in two weeks, that was the time frame that they gave us, and they definitely told us that the dress would be ready to pick up by then (to me, "ready to pick up" means CLEAN and in new condition - we could have bought a dress in better shape at Goodwill than the dress they wanted over $500 for). At this point it would have been too late to shop elsewhere, so my SIL agreed to let them clean and repair the dress for her.
When she went to pick it up another two weeks later, my mother and I couldn't go with her; as it turns out, they STILL didn't clean the gown! She ended up having to choose an entirely different dress, as at this point she had no faith in their ability to have it cleaned and the wedding was only a week and a half away; the only dress they had in stock in her size that was similar to her first choice cost about $300 more, and she ended up paying the difference since she didn't know any better. With everything else to do for the wedding, we never did get a chance to back to the store with her to demand a refund of the price difference.
Overall, this is the WORST customer service experience I've ever had; they obviously took advantage of and discriminated against my sister-in-law). Additionally, I found their overall selection of merchandise to be very poor quality and overpriced, despite the fact that it's a "discount" store. I will most certainly never shop at Group USA again, and I wouldn't recommend that anyone else shop their either! read more
