Thursday, November 17, 2011

sammydress.com order review, october 2011


I stumbled upon SammyDress, a Shenzhen-based wholesale clothing supplier, in a Google shopping search in October while looking for a certain style of cute OP for wintertime (and seeing if I couldn't bag one for cheaper than a shopping session at YesStyle.) According to the website, their stock includes "Wedding Dresses, Special Casual Dresses, Women’s Clothing, Cosplay Costumes, Intimate Lingerie, Cosplay Wigs and Spandex Zentai suits** etc."
In case you were wondering, THISis a zentai suit. Your arduous search for a shiny, full-body S&M mermaid suit is officially at an end.
 Along with the dress I found some other cute stuff, so I decided to try my luck with an order. Unfortunately, throughout the painful and lengthy order process, I was faced with some sketchy customer service/language barrier issues AND one of my items arrived reeking as if it had been sitting in a moldy warehouse since last season by the smell of it (and it probably was.) By the time it was all over I was too exasperated to lodge any complaints. It wasn't what I'd call a hellacious shopping experience, but to save myself the trouble I'll be keeping my distance from now on.

Product Name
Price
Qty
Subtotal
USD 6.36
1
USD 6.36
USD 8.57
1
USD 8.57
Color:Blue
USD 1.83
2
USD 3.66
USD 11.02
1
USD 11.02
Color:White
USD 7.92
1
USD 7.92
USD 8.13
1
USD 8.13
USD 2.51
1
USD 2.51
         Commodity price :USD 48.17


Packaging EMS plastic envelope
Total Cost Commodity price : 48.17 + Delivery costs: 39.00 + Insurance: 1.96 = USD 89.13
REFUND-POST TRANSACTION  - 33.45 = $55.68 USD TOTAL


Selection 3/5
There is a good amount of cute stuff to wade through, but the best things seem to sold out or sell quickly. The items are not frequently updated on whether or not they've sold out. The staff failed to communicate to me regarding the items that were sold out -- the items that were crossed out, above -- and asked me to choose new ones after they had taken my money! We were able to settle this after a long and drawn out chain of messages, where I asked for a refund and we finally agreed to put the extra money toward shipping costs.


Price 5/5
Wholesale prices. Nothing to complain about here!! Shipping is what you'd expect for EMS.


Quality 2/5
This is where it starts to get dicey. I had some issues with the products I got--

Holes in seams were annoying, but easily fixable with quick n' dirty hand-sewing magic. Plenty of loose strings. 

Large hole on the v-neck dress' side seam, right out of the box
& the neckline seam was unraveling.

The shoulder seams on the pleated dress were also coming apart.

The built-in slip on both dresses I bought seems way too short and awkward, in each case about a hand and a half's length shorter than the hem. This is probably nitpicky of me, but since both dresses are translucent you can easily see the discrepancy between the dress and slip hems, and I wasn't so happy about that. The lighting and photoshop magic in the stock photos doesn't reveal this, of course.





Note how in the above photo, just by being worn normally, the slip most obviously rode up, causing super sloppiness to ensue Aughhhhh!!!!! The dress is pretty much unwearable without another slip worn underneath.



I lucked out more with the pleated dress -- the slip is not entirely obvious, or at least doesn't take away from the overall look of the dress (it seems to be of heavier material, so it stays in place well) but shorts or bloomers still have to be worn underneath because of its translucence.


The item I was most looking forward to receiving, the strawberry sweater, was MOLDY, despite being individually packaged in plastic. I opened the wrapper and the pungent stench of moldy basement bowled me over. It had probably been sitting in a dank warehouse for months, if not years. For someone who is terribly allergic to mold, this was not an ideal scenario. I dropped it in the washing machine immediately and it took three washes to finally get the smell out, and one more still because after the third wash I tried it on and then broke out in some awesome hives before I had to drop it back into the washer again.

Overall, not shining examples of workmanship, but not too unexpected, either, considering the price. I was only truly upset about the mold issue, for all reasons stated above.


Ease of Shopping/Webshop organization 2/5
The shopping interface is not well organized.
As I said eariler, the crossed out items I listed above are items I bought and paid for before I was told they were out of stock, and then was told by the customer service rep to choose different items. There was no indication they were out of stock on the item pages -- they just don't seem to be updated often, and the staff don't seem to have a good grasp of the stock (it might come from elsewhere and be ordered or made on a case-by-case basis? I really have no idea.)


Shipping 3/5
Once the package was sent out it arrived quickly, but it took ages for it to be shipped in the first place. The items were plastic wrapped and hastily packaged, and I mentioned the issue with the sweater.


Customer Service 2/5
I was not blown away by the professionalism of the staff. There is an extremely slow response time and staff seem to not be able to communicate without the aid of translation software, which makes for some interesting lapses in communication (responses sometimes come across as brusque or rude due to language barriers/lack of nuance.)  The communication barriers are navigable, but the fact that it takes them so long to respond to any sort of inquiries is frustrating.

After having this experience, I wouldn't shop here again. The whole transaction was just a barrel of awkward, disappointing, inconvenience, and made me extremely wary of purchasing anything from shady wholesaler sites like this one. I do freaking love my strawberry sweater -- which is now free of moldiness -- and it's become a cold weather staple for me these days, so I at least came away with a happy souvenir for my troubles!!

Who doesn't wanna look like a giant strawberry?!
 

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