Posted on 05/22/2011 10:27:50 AM PDT by rawhide
MYFOXNY.COM - Sophomore Jackie Genovese, 16, of New Jersey, had the perfect prom dress and date. But tragedy struck last week when her boyfriend of two years was killed in a car accident.
Jackie's boyfriend, James, died on the way home from a baseball team dinner. He was a popular Jackson High School senior only weeks from graduation.
She bought her $1,200 dress at Freehold's Diane and Co., also known for their popular Oxygen show "Dress Coutoure."
She wanted a refund for her dress so she could help pay for her boyfriend's funeral. Jackie's mom asked the owners of the store for a refund, which is against store policy. Instead they offered credit. But Jackie's mom said when she showed up to bring the dress back, they were nasty and unsympathetic.
Now her friends have started a Facebook page to call on boycotting the dress store.
Diane and Co. denies the accusations. Over the phone, owners said "this terrible tragic situation has been spun out of control. It's not a matter of being vicious or uncompassionate, but we are faced with tragedy all the time. And we weren't given a chance to rectify the situation."
A woman with a dress store in Indiana saw the Facebook page and offered to give Jackie a dress.
She still has the $1,200 store credit, which she is not sure she will.
Diane and Co. is standing firm on the no refund policy, but has offered to make a donation to a memorial set up in James name.
If that is the case, it does seem suspect on the surface, but people in grief also do strange things. For all we know, perhaps she and her mom had a talk that day, and the girl didn't want the dress in her house as a reminder. Of course I have no way of knowing, but that certainly seems plausible.
Well, that certainly puts a different smell on things. Thanks for pinging me to that.
I presume at some point they realised that this is the Obama age, where everybody feels entitled and you use the internet to destroy your enemies, so it was best just to give in to the extortion.
There just aren’t enough good-thinking people around to support a store owner; too many think they aren’t acting “decently” unless they give in to any sob story they are told, even though they probably hear these stories all the time, dresses (unlike most things people sell to clients) are easy to use once and return, and in this case it seems the story wasn’t really true, although I’d like to see better confirmation of what happened in the end.
I would give the refund. I’d probably be out of business in a week running a store like that, because I’d trust everybody, they’d all lie and return their dresses, and I’d essentially be providing a free dress-loan service to every self-entitled family in the district. But I’d do well on volume.
I wonder if those people trying to rip me off would get upset if they found out I was giving them other people’s returned dresses. That would be hilarious though, to have someone returning a dress after using it, and be able to tell them it was OK because I had already lent that dress out a dozen times.
I don’t know how many other businesses suffer from so much fraud and abuse by their own clients, but I would suspect there’s a lot more of it these days then when I was young and we respected business and had real ethics. Nowadays, it seems it’s whatever you can get away with, and everybody sides with the malcontents over the evil empire-business.
So I am wondering how the boys parents feel about what this girl tried to do. She lied, IMO, about having to help pay for the funeral. I can see her wanting to get her money back for the (outrageously expensive) dress. She got what she deserved and more. Our son was killed at age 19 so we have some experiences in this. I would be appalled if his girlfriend has done this.
OK, now it's extortion, others have referred to it as 'economic terrorism,' but when we conservatives boycott a business, we refer to it simply as 'bad publicity' or 'free market forces at work.' Whatever.
Again, nobody's asking or suggesting that they give in to any sob story. I simply stated that zero tolerance policies (i.e. 'no returns') in the private sector are just as silly as zero tolerance policies in the public sector if there isn't a means for a mature adult to make exceptions to them in extreme cases. Even our legal system recognizes matters of extenuation and mitigation in criminal matters, and employs the reasonable person standard in civil cases precisely because not all cases are the same, even though the law is supposed to (in theory) apply equally to all. I'm sure the intent of the store's no return policy was forged by experiences of people purchasing dresses for one time wear, then returning them. That clearly was not the case here, and I would not trust, nor empower any person who can not recognize the obvious and extreme differences with a whole lot of customer service or other business decisions.
By virtue of a personal relationship, I'm not at all unfamiliar with the prom/wedding/tux business, and quite honestly I wouldn't be surprised if the returned gown didn't end up on the rack at a sister store, or even at a competitor's business and end up minimizing their losses, but that's neither here nor there. Handling this case wit a little bit of discretion would have been, IMHO a loss leader for the business, and the extension of good will would have probably generated a lot of word of mouth publicity that easily would have made upt the difference.
Yes, it does. And someone FReepmailed me some further info last night.
The girl’s parents are divorced. The father bought the dress for his daughter. The mother tried to return it the day after the boy died, (guess she was thinking here’s an easy $1200 from the ex)
When the store said they could not give her the refund, she made up the sad story about needing money for the funeral.
However it now appears the store would not give her the refund because she did not have the credit card on which it was charged, so they did what stores do in this case gave a credit for future merchandise AND although not required to do so also offered to contribute to a memorial fund to pay funeral expenses.
The girl’s friends then went public with the story of the evil store which would not refund the girl’s money for the funeral. They are the ones who set up the boycott. They have even established a memorial fund, although it does not say it is for funeral expenses.
The father took the dress back, got HIS money back and donated it to a charity BECAUSE the boy’s family do NOT need any help paying for the funeral.
I knew there was something missing in this story when the store gave the refund to the father and he donated it to charity. It would appear the store’s refund policy required a receipt and a credit card matching that receipt to issue a refund which the mother did not have. I guess the story got legs of it’s own, thank the girlfriends, and got away from the mother, who does not look so good in the final review.
I am so sorry for the boy’s parents who have had this drama played out over their son’s death.
And with this I am finished on this thread.
The family went to a business and asked for a refund they were not entitled to. When the business didn't hand them $1200 in cash, they went to the press to harass the business, until the business paid the money. That is the difference between extortion and boycott.
According to the post before yours, we were both wrong about the totality of the circumstances if the information posted there is correct.
I am glad that the correct info is out now. The mom is the culprit along with those gal friends of hers although I am guessing all they knew was what they were told. They all should be ashamed!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.