Re: Review of ‘Enchanted Clothings’ (on Facebook) (smarffy on gupshup)
**‘Dis’ Enchanted Clothings **
I would like to share my experience of ‘Enchanted Clothings’ by Samar. I saw a few good reviews on gupshup so I placed an order for one outfit with Samar as I wanted to see how it turned out. She kindly didn’t take any payment from me at this stage. She seemed pleasant to talk to and she turned around the outfit fast and sent me a few pics and it looked really nice.This aligned with what people had said in their reviews and so I went ahead and ordered a few more including some casuals and some semi formals for my mother and sister for Eid (in July) in April. I spoke to Samar about when she expected she would be able to complete the rest and she told me by the end of May which I was happy with. I also told her I was really interested in pashmina fabrics and certain lawn prints and she said she would be able to do this
Approaching late June I hadn’t had any updates and I was frantically messaging her and getting no response even though she was showing as online on whatsapp. Initially she told me she was having issues with her phone and that’s why she was unresponsive, then later on she had wi-fi issues,then later on ‘other people’ were ‘making a fuss’, then there was the heatwave,then she had an accident etc. The excuses just never seemed to end! I asked,pleaded, begged for pictures so many times and it was so difficult to get anything from her. By this point I was getting pretty irate and worried about what was going on as I had been entrusted by my family to get their outfits for Eid and it was fast approaching. Samar’s excuse was that some things are ‘out of her hands’. Fair enough but when you are running this type of business it’s your responsibility to chase, be assertive with your workers, make an effort to get things done and to be responsive to your customer. You can’t expect a first time customer to just ‘trust’ you when you are showing no signs of making any effort, including with the simple task of responding tomessages and sharing pictures.
Anyway after a lot of stress and aggravation we got somewhere and she informed me that she wasn’t able to get the lawn prints, pashmina fabric and chiknkari outfit that she told me at the start she would be able to do. She also eventually agreed to send the Eid outfits the week before Eid and the restlater. At this point I agreed to make the full payment.
The clothes that I received were a mixed bag. Two that she had completed at the very start were done nicely and the rest that had obviously been rushed were pretty average. These other clothes had looked ok in pictures but on closer examination the stitching was poor and the embroideries outdated (thread embroidery was like the quality that you used to get back inthe 1990s). It was clear that Samar’s darzi was an amateur who didn’t know what he was doing. I had provided ‘body’ measurements and I CLEARLY told Samar these were the tight fitted body sizes and not kameez sizes but she didn’t pay attention to this and most of the clothes were made so tight that they cannot be worn (the same measurements have been used with 3 different vendors without any issues ever, including one reputable gupshup vendor I used last year whose clothes I continue to wear). I gave one size for myself and my trousers arrived in different sizes. Some fitted ok, some would fit on the leg but wouldn’t go over the hips, some had the same measurement for the ankle all the way up to the knee (surely anyone with any common sense knows that trousers are supposed to be looser where the calf is fuller and then taper down at the ankle). All these issues with the fitting means a lot of the outfits are just unwearable, particularly because she had not ensured (as we had discussed atthe start) that enough material was left inside for adjustments (there was hardly any fabric inside and there would be a risk of tearing the silk if we even tried). Other examples of poor work was that an outfit I had ordered for my mother on Eid, I was told was going to be made with charmeuse and the fabric that was actually used was something else altogether and the sleeves were made using a totally different fabric (crepe) to the body which obviously looked odd. There were also crooked hems, lawn prints sewn upside down, no zips on the tight fitted silk kameezs and other mistakes which showed she was not using an experienced and professional darzi with common sense and attention to detail or providing him with detailed instructions if that’s what he really needed.
I had also said to Samar several times that I wanted to see final pictures of everything before she sent them to me. In what was supposed to be the first parcel she sent clothes that she hadn’t shared final pictures off. Clothes that I didn’t need urgently and that I had seen earlier and had issues with as they were very poor replicas. We discussed that these clothes needed to be fixed and I needed to see pictures before they were sent so I was under the impression that they would be sent in the second parcel once I had approved.
After sending the first parcel and receiving my complaints about the trousers being unwearable because they didn’t have extra material for adjustments she then BLOCKED me on whatsapp. I tried contacting her again through another number to ensure the same mistakes weren’t made with the remaining clothes or to see if some extra fabric could be sent to make these trousers wearable and she blocked that number too. Later on when we still hadn’t received our second parcel my mother called her to find out what was going on and she informed her that the parcel was on its way.
We finally received the second parcel although this was after the events which we needed some of these clothes for. There was one nice casual and there were some lawns that were stitched well and trousers were all the correct size (using the exact samemeasurements!) I understand that Samar had outsourced the lawn to another vendor who obviously had a much better darzi. The formals that arrived had similar issues as before due to the lack of professional tailoring e.g.trousers that were far too tight to be wearable, linings on sleeves that didn’t go the whole way down to the cuff and embroidery that was gaudy and cheap looking. One example of the lack of common sense and attention to detail was that one of the designs I had sent a picture off had fully embroidered sleeves but the girl that was wearing the outfit clearly had a dupatta on her shoulder. What Samar did was to finish the embroidery couple of inches below the shoulder which just looks really odd! Honestly, anyone who looked at the picture properly would be able to see the girl is wearing a dupatta that is covering the top part of her fully embroidered sleeves and if they really were unsure a good designer would have asked. On this same outfit which had gold embroidery on the sleeve she had also added a silver banarsi patti on the hem!
In the end I don’t understand what happened. I think she probably is capable of producing some reasonable stuff as evidenced by the three outfits of mine that she did nicely and the reviewws here. Perhaps the other badly made outfits and inconsistency in quality was due to using different and less experienced workers/darzis or rushing the work even though PLENTY of time was given? It certainly looks that way. What I do know is that she didn’t give my order the attention you would expect from a good vendor. The impression I was left with was that she is not very professional, she doesn’t have good communication or customer service skills and doesn’t seem particularly committed or interested in developping her business. Blocking a customer because they are not happy with what you have sent them is unacceptable in my opinion.If you are going to provide a bad service and you don’t have the stomach to be able to deal with the complaints that result from that you should not be in business.
I did receive all the clothes in the end after going through this stressful experience but honestly even if I put the poor customer service issue aside, I feel like I have just wasted most of my money on clothes that are for the most part unwearable. When I placed the order with Enchanted Clothings I was looking for good quality clothing with professional stitching and up to date embroideries. The quality of the clothing was very inconsistent and I felt that the person who was making most of these outfits was not a professional, didn’t have any common sense and had not been given the direction they needed
Even though I am very disappointed I have tried to be fair in my review. I’ve written it because hopefully it will make anyone like me who sees a couple of good reviews on this forum and maybe even tries her out for one outfit think twice before parting with their hard earned cash for a bigger order. And who knows maybe this review will make this vendor and others like her think carefully about the service they are providing and making mistakes like these which leave the customer having paid for unwearable clothing.
its always us the workers making fuss ! ( hope this helps) And please. If you want me to compensate! Please let me know. as i offered this you earlier as well. I again apologize for the unpleasant experience you had! and after reading whatever you have wrote i feel blessed in all the ways! there are still people who can believe me having an accident.. and being in a really bad situation and prayed. Lesson definitely learnt. And trust me there really is bad karma.