Attack of the Wedding Industry
My good friend C. and I went wedding dress shopping on Thursday, since I had the day off for Confederate Heroes Day. (Yes, we have that here in Texas. I apologize on behalf of my entire state.)
We went to David's Bridal first, since my general theory about the wedding is to first look at the cheapest version of the thing I want and see if I can stand it. We were greeted cheerfully but not aggressively by a young woman seated at a table. She asked if anyone was helping us. We said no, we were just going to look around. She told us that we had to register in order to try anything on. I figured that meant they had some kind of guest book.
So we looked at a lot of very ugly dresses, found a few we actually liked and pulled them out, then went looking for someone to let us into a dressing room.
"If you'll just fill this out," the young woman said, "And there's about a 20 minute wait currently for a bridal consultant."
The form asked for not only my name, but my address, phone numbers, and email address. C. had warned me that the wedding industry's main mode of operation was to play on cultural programming in order to suck all the money you have out of your wallet (cash) and/or undermine your future financial security (credit). But I didn't realize they also wanted to keep me under surveillance.
The form giver must have seen something on my face, because she kindly explained that this allowed them to create a file for me in their central computer and store any gowns I might be interested in, so I could go to any David's Bridal and they would be able to help me.
Not reassured.
I don't know of any other retail experience that works like this. You have identified a product you might be interested in knowing more about, but you are required to reveal and allow them to store personally identifying information before you are allowed to examine it? I suppose giving your driver's license to the car dealership to take a test drive might count, but that's a product that is incredibly expensive and highly mobile. I'll be damned if I could get any of those dresses into my purse and walk out the front door.
So I did the only thing I could do. I lied. My apologies to whoever has the street address 2 digits off mine and the domain name I made up to go with my fictitious first and lat names.
It does present an interesting social situation, though, since it turns out I am potentially interested in one of those dresses. How do I phrase it when I go back to check on the dress again? I want the salesperson who helped us to get her commission, so I want to go back to her, but I don't think Emily Post has anything for that initial conversation. I think what I did was an appropriate defense of my personal privacy. But how exactly do you say "I thought your business practice was unethical and invasive, so I faked the information I gave you last time. Would you please sell me a dress?"
4 Comments
That reminds me of the enterprise software business. There's a whole category of software that doesn't come with price tags, just little notes where you have to get a salesperson involved to customize some expensive program for you.
That's ok -- I routinely lie about my phone number when they ask for it at the cash register. I don't think Best Buy or PetCo need to be calling me. So, as you say, apologies to the person with my phone number + 9.
Just wait, it only gets better.
Ugh, I've been dealing with David's for a bridesmaid's dress. They've been awful! It started with a little size 0 salesgirl looking at me distainfully when I asked to try on a dress and saying, "I don't think we have anything that will fit you." Hello, you have signs all over saying you carry up to size 24 and I asked for a 12? She's lucky she didn't get the dress shoved down her throat.