After much searching, we finally found a dress that was reasonably priced and everyone liked on lightinthebox.com. Ironically, as much time as I spend on the internet, I hate buying things online, but the dresses were cute, and both the price and the reviews were good. Since she's just shy of being computer illiterate, I'm ordering the dresses for her, and I've just got the order placed (four different colors, each a different size) when I realize that the price doesn't come up to $400, as I expected with four dresses that were a hundred dollars each, it came up to over $500 after shipping, making it over $25 per dress. A fee that isn't mentioned anywhere else on their website.
Alright, well, what do I know about shipping dreses? Maybe it's expensive, and it wasn't like I didn't expect shipping costs. So after her approval (even with the shipping, it's still less than any of the dresses we found locally), I add to cart and check out and all that jazz, only to have the confirmation screen pop up with four dresses of the same color, in the same size.
Um, okay. No big deal; I'll just ask them about it. I first tried the "We have constant online chat support!" button, which I could open but no text appeared, nor did a place for me to type. So, I'm on firefox and maybe it doesn't work without internet explorer, so I try to file a complaint instead. Not exactly what I wanted to do, as I didn't have any complaints, but I needed to get in touch with someone as I didn't want them to charge my mother $500 for four dresses of which we could only use one. Apparently, you can't file any sort of complaint in the first hour after ordering, so I wait and browse the rest of the site, trying to figure out what happened.
On the order confirmation screen, I'm told the same thing that I was told before: Four dresses, one color, one size.
On the screen to lodge a complaint, it's four dresses, one color, four sizes.
On the last page I found, the order was actually correct: Four dresses, four colors, for sizes. Huh?
So the hour finally passes, I file the complaint, and they get back to us the next day confirming that the order is, in fact, correct. They didn't explain what had happened, but I'm actually thinking it was one of the problem-is-between-chair-and-keyboard sort of thing. When placing the order and picking out the dresses, there isn't a "change number of dresses/colors/styles" option, so I ordered each dress individually, clicking on the icon that appeared in my cart rather than looking everything up all over again. I'd just done something similar helping my friend stock his e-bay store so I hadn't thought that it would cause their website to freak out, but then, what do I know?
Anyway, we wait. And wait. And wait. It's now been almost two weeks since we've heard anything about the dresses, and their website said that it would ship in three days, and be at her house in five, but the status on the dresses hadn't changed since we ordered them. And, you know, paid for them. It wouldn't be such a big deal, but the wedding was planned very quickly (long story short: her soon to be mother in law needs back surgery for an accident at work, and wants them to get married before then in case of complications), and it's now the Monday before the wedding. We try the "we're always online to help you! 8D" button (okay, there's really no emoticons on their website) but it's still not working, and they're not responding to our e-mails, so we finally cancel the order and resolve to find the dresses somewhere else.
Although I've heard of it being very different, the ladies that helped us at David's Bridal were indredibly friendly, professional and helpful and even though it was more last minute than it had been when we first ordered the dresses and we got all the dresses and sizes in...basically the same colors that we wanted (the difference between clover and fern, apple and burgundy). Great! Dresses are settled.
It's the day before the wedding, the new dresses have been hemmed, and--that's weird. What's this box? It's a small-ish box no bigger than two shoeboxes that says lightinthe--oh. First of all, they wanted us to pay $25 per dress so they could stuff them all in one box that wouldn't fit my prom dress? And secondly, as it turns out, two days after we had canceled the order, they'd shipped it out, and now were desputing our canceling the credit card charges. I find it odd that they ignored all of our e-mails and comments, but they worked really darn fast after we cancelend the order. I'm tempted to say the whole thing was a scam on their part (after all, if we'd opened the box without checking to see who it was from, they could argue that we'd worn them and put them back, though how they got them in the box in the first place I'll never know).
So...yes. Their website looked slick, and at first their service seemed helpful if not friendly after the fiasco with ordering the dresses in the first place. But then they hang on to the dresses--and my mothers money--for almost two weeks, and only ship after we canceled the order? Awesome. We paid $30 more per dress at David's, but there were no surprise charges and at least we knew we'd get them.