Lulus Fail.

(Guest post by Hilary.)

Now this is a story all about how some online shopping turned upside down. I tried to shop at Lulus, but stop right there, it turns out that they totally suck at customer care.

Alright. I never claimed to be a great rapper. I have, however, been a fairly loyal Lulus.com customer -- until now.

This day and age online shopping is an extremely prevalent facet of the fashion industry. As many of us sit at our computers 8 hours a day, 5 days a week (likely more), doing a little virtual window shopping is a nice way to take a mental break from the workflow. Instead of visiting the water cooler, we visit a virtual boutique.

Anyway, I am a big fan of the online shop Lulus.com. Or rather, I was a big fan until I had one of the worst customer service experiences with them of my life.

I am getting married in a month and told my bridesmaids they could select their own dresses as long as they were within a certain shade of color. Easy enough, especially with online shopping where you can discover tons of options from the comfort of your home and don’t have to peruse malls and shops for hours on end (which we also tried). The search filter features was a huge benefit. My mom ordered a number of dresses for my sister, including one from Lulus. Before ordering she double and triple checked that the dress could be returned. Dress comes in the mail. Doesn’t fit. Yada yada. You get the story. However, here is where the trouble began.

The dress, as it turns out (and not at all clearly labeled on their site) was non-returnable. In an effort to resolve this issue, we called Lulus and they explained that if we returned the dress they would give us a credit.

So we did.

And then my mom, love her, explained that I could use the Lulus credit for something to wear on my honeymoon. I found a dress – the Tricks of the Trade Taupe Maxi Dress – (many thanks to Gin for acting as my momentary personal shopper) and waited for the credit to come through.

And waited. And waited. And waited.

No credit.

Then the dress sold out. Which my heart was now set on. (It happens.)

So I signed up for their “Alert me when this dress is back in stock” option.

I kept the page fresh on my phone even and checked every day to make sure I didn’t miss it, determined to buy it myself if we didn’t get the credit in time.

Nothing.

So finally I contact Lulus to ask when the dress would be coming back in stock. Turns out it had already been restocked and sold out again. To which I was never notified. When I explained my frustration after this entire ordeal, the customer service chat session went cold. No response. I then closed it and started a new session with, turns out, the same girl, and explained that I had been waiting for a response.

“I was in the middle of typing and the window closed! It will just be a second.”

Since when is it couth to use exclamation points in a customer service chat session? I was then informed rather coldly that the dress was no longer available and given a discount code for future use. I mean, at least they did that.

But I still didn’t have my dress. Or my credit. Which, after all this, it turns out, went back to my mom’s credit card and, just like the non-returnable dress, was not at all clearly explained.

Lucky for me, and after numerous online searches for a replacement, I found this identical dress for almost the exact same price.