Has anyone purchased a wedding dress from these online stores?

by Dylan
(Washington, United States)

Has anyone purchased a wedding dress from these online stores?

http://www.inweddingdress.com/
http://www.instyleweddingdress.com/
http://www.weddingnova.com/

Please share your purchase experience...

From Diane:

Hi Dylan,

Thanks for your question regarding these wedding suppliers.

If you read through the rest of the reviews located on this Bride's Reviews of Online Wedding Dress Suppliers page, you'll find many reviews for one of the suppliers you listed "inweddingdress.com"

Some are good and some are bad, and you should be aware that I have found that some Chinese dress suppliers falsely provide "good" reviews, so please be careful.

Now let's take a look at instyleweddingdress.com

They are a company with Chinese made dresses.

This is a very young company, 9 months, 3 weeks old (as of September 3, 2010). So it hasn't been around very long and isn't as well established as some of the American based online Wedding Dress Suppliers which have been in business for years.

Their alexa ranking is so high (4,602,319 - not a good thing) that they are probably only receiving a few visitors a day and probably selling to only a fraction of them.

Their "Contact Us" page is non-existent so there is no way to get in touch with them. (red flag!)

On their FAQ page they say...

How do I order?

The most convenient and safest way is to order online. Orders can be placed on our website using our secure online order form which allows you to make your payment online. We do not accept phone or email orders at present.

In their FAQ, they also say...

Please be aware that we will ship all items as "Gifts" or "Samples" to avoid fees imposed by customs, but the customers will be fully responsible for similar fees if there is any.

which is nice but also ILLEGAL (red flag!)

And then, take a look at the RETURNS policy:

We accept returns on new dresses in their original condition – unworn, unwashed, unaltered, undamaged, clean and free of lint and hair. All returns must be with 3 days of when the shipment was delivered by the carrier. Please obtain a Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA) Number within 3 days of the date you received your order. The item will not be accepted if it is returned apply exceed the 3-days time limit. Once the RMA is emailed, you will have 8 days to ship back your order. If you would like to replace the item you have returned, please place a new order.

All returned dresses will have a 50% restocking fee applied to the full purchase price of the dress. Returned dresses will void any promotional codes and any merchandise purchased using a promotional code will be charged the full retail price.If you would like to replace the item, please place a new order.

So there's no phone number or email address to contact them, so how do you get an address to send the dress back???!!! (red flag!!!)

And then, even if you send the dress back you will be charged 50% restocking fee and I don't even know what the last part means, do you? (red flag!!!)

Please also note that even though the site says that it carries designer dresses, they are more than likely knock-offs of original designers.

So those are just a few things that I picked up about instyleweddingdress.com

Now let's take a look at www.weddingnova.com

Wedding Nova has been online for just over a year and does get quite a bit of online visitors.

They do have a contact us page with an email form and phone numbers.

I do recommend that if anyone is considering purchasing from this site, please do contact them prior to purchasing and make sure that you like the customer service that you get.

Their return policy is quite likeable...

Returns can be sent back within 15 days upon receipt, all returned items must never been used and in new condition. All return packages must be insured, your payment minus original shipping charges will be fully posted to the original funding sources with 5-7 days once we received the returns. Buyers are always responsible for the shipping charges to return.

All in all, I can't see anything visibly wrong with this site.

If there are any brides out there who have purchase from either of these sites, do please let us know here!