Beware of the bridal gown wholesaler "Divina Sposa Americas." I had the misfortune of doing business with them, and while I got over my anger shortly after my brief encounter with them, a friend urged me to (at the very least) get the message out about what a horrible company it is.
The company is run by a young man named Pini. When I was there, Pini spent a lot of his time on MSN or Facebook (a social networking website), and often took long breaks doing things like going to have a chat with the owners of the bridal boutique upstairs, or taking off in his car without telling us where he was going or when he'd be back. I rarely ever saw him doing much else, although I'm sure he must have done some work at some point.
Whenever we received phone calls from client boutiques, we were instructed to inform the inquiring party that Pini was unavailable. While on some occasions this was true, for the most part it wasn't. Most of the time, he just couldn't be bothered to answer the phone. Several of his clients would phone back repeatedly (in some cases, many times a day, for over a month), asking for shipping dates, among other things. One storeowner called, requesting some lace to go with a dress he'd sent her, and it took her over a month to finally get in touch with him. Had he had a good reason for not taking her calls earlier, I wouldn't be writing this, but the truth is that he claimed he "forgot about it, " despite the fact that we left him a note detailing her request many times. This is just one of many similar cases.
Moreover, when people asked for a turnaround time, he'd often make up a date just to please his clients. Not just a few times, storeowners would call in looking for a gown, only to find out that the dress would only be coming in at a later date. On one occasion, the dress came in so late that it had to be sent special delivery directly to the bride-- and it was only scheduled to arrive the day before her wedding (no time for alterations or anything of the sort). Because of this kind of poor customer service, many companies have cut all relations with Divina Sposa Americas.
Furthermore, a major point of contention is that Divina Sposa Americas wholesales to discount websites like House of Brides. As anyone in the bridal industry knows, House of Brides offers designer gowns at exceedingly low prices that draw customers away from small- and medium-sized boutiques. Many clients complained about this, and Pini instructed us to tell them that he would get them to stop advertising the prices for his line, although at the time of writing, the website still has prices available for all to see.
Finally, not only do the boutiques suffer, but so have many brides. Sometimes they would complain through the boutiques, and sometimes they would call our warehouse directly. In one case, a woman called in to complain that the quality of the dress she received was much poorer than the one she'd tried on in the store (it was not the first time I'd heard such a complaint). Pini's response was that this was impossible, and that she'd have to complain directly to the store she'd bought it from. In this manner, he wouldn't have to deal with her nor the boutique (as he rarely took their calls anyway). The woman was devastated, as she'd already tried to do that and had been turned away. I can only imagine that her wedding may well have been ruined.
Therefore, if you want to save yourself a headache, my word of advice is just to not do business with Divina Sposa Americas.
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