mytailor.com houston stop - SF made me a bad customer

[rajesh06]

Originally Posted by lawyerdad

But if you nevertheless prefer them aesthetically, will they refuse to use them?

Don't know becuase I never asked. I am very satisfied with their shirts - so I have never really pressed the point.

This may be a case of: if one is paying $220 for a shirt, one will trust the judgment of the tailor; if one is paying $75 - one tends to question more!

 

[stach]

What's the point of having a custom made item if you can't order what you want? A good salesperson will explain added expenses but if you don't like the finished product it would be your own fault, unless the workmanship was bad.

 

[gdl203]

Originally Posted by DocHolliday

A split yoke serves no purpose on RTW shirts, except to look pretty. If you think about it, a split yoke in RTW is essentially the same as a single piece of cloth; it consists of two matching pieces that have been sewn together in the middle.

Absolutely. The only reason a tailor would say something like that is to cut a few minutes of labor time, a few inches of fabric and make a a few more bucks...

 

[raley]

Originally Posted by DocHolliday

Are you sure he wasn't allowing extra length for shrinkage/bending of the arm? Unbuttoned, all properly fitting shirt sleeves extend past the wrist. It sounds like he was making them the proper length, unless I'm misreading your post or you have very long hands.

Well, I suppose that could be the reason, but what I said in my post is exactly what he said:

If I weren't used to long sleeves (how does he know this anyway?

), he would make the sleeves the normal length. Instead, since I am in fact used to longer sleeves (again, according to him), he was going to make them slightly too long.

It confused me as well.

 

[raley]

Originally Posted by lawyerdad

Got it, thanks. How obnoxious! Sounds like you handled the situation with much more equanimity than I might have. I'd vote in favor of your sending the company an email. The tone of your post is quite reasonable and factual, and I'm sure that would come through in any email. They ought to know, and ought to want to know, how they are being represented "out in the field" by their employees/contractors.

Maybe I will do this. I am actually quite interested in what Joe H. would say. I tried to be as reasonable as I could. I don't have much bargaining power aside from the fact that I am the customer. I am young and I didn't want to walk in acting like a know-it-all that is trying to make the tailor look stupid (kind of like when someone walks into a bar and orders something obscure to try to impress his date by stumping the bartender).

 

[realbespoke]

the old saying "you get what you pay for!" First, If you showed him a split yoke and he did not know what it was, that was the grand opportunity to walk right out the door. Second, anyone who has seen any type of Mother of pearl button whether its Australian or not knows the difference between MOP and plastic! Typical of these guys though. They give the industry a bad name. And none of them are well dressed, ever! so why buy from a guy that looks worse than you? makes no sense.
We produce shirts with split yokes standard, MOP buttons standard, and we usually place the monograms inside the yoke. We only use the best Italian and English shirting cloth. The shirt is hand-made!
www.marlonaustin.com

 

[montmorency]

When I went to a shirt maker that gets a lot of play on this board and asked him about a split yoke, he was completely dismissive. He told me that most shirts that seem to have split yokes only have a sewn seam in the single piece of fabric to give the impression of a split yoke. He also told me that split yokes serve no purpose. So, you can encounter resistance on some of these details with a few people in the business.

 

[Shirtmaven]

As a customer looking to have shirts made, you have to decide what is most important to you, or what combination of these things.

Fit
Fabric
Needlework
Price
aesthetic details and a multitude of options.
Timely delivery and customer service


Someone out there with too much time on their hands should set up a grid and see where the various vendors fall.

Carl

 

[VKK3450]

Originally Posted by lawyerdad

True enough. But if your tailor recommends x, and you politely tell him that you understand what he's saying but still want y, you're ultimately talking about your garment, not his. Now if you were asking him to do something he simply didn't feel comfortable doing because he thought it would be unprofessional or would look so bad that he would be embarrassed to have people see it, of course it's his perogative to refuse. But the "you can't handle the truth!" attitude raley encountered sounds to me like it stems more from ignorance, trepidation, and pettiness than some deeply-held sense of professional standards. (Especially since it's not even clear, at least to me, that the person Raley was dealing with was the person who would be performing or overseeing the construction of his shirts.)

Ohhhh I thoroughly agree with you and also with Raley's handling and assessment of his experience. I don’t mean to imply that he should have sucked it up and taken the tailors word as the "gospel". It sounds like he knows enough about what he wants and of course the aesthetic decisions should be his to make. I also would not have felt comfortable having my shirts made there, no matter how good the deal.

I was referring more to a generic situation of going to an "expert" for a specialized or bespoke service and quoting the famous "customer is always right" line rather than using their expertise. Likely more applicable when going to Patrick or Carl than at mytailor.com.

I guess some of my attitude comes from being a consultant. In my cases, the customer is quite frequently “wrong”, and even though they sometimes don’t want to admit it, that’s the reason that they hire us.

K

 

[VKK3450]

Originally Posted by realbespoke

And none of them are well dressed, ever! so why buy from a guy that looks worse than you? makes no sense.
www.marlonaustin.com

Well, what's the saying? The shoemaker's children always go barefoot? Plumber's faucets always leak? Sober bartenders (yeah right)...

(What's wrong with me? 5 posts ago I was refuting the validity of old sayings, and now I am spouting them)

K

 

[dantheman]

Seems like he saw that you knew your stuff when it came to shirts and that you also were quite particular with what you were after and he probably wasn't confident that his product would be up to your standard. But rember, it is a budget option for MTM shirts. So you are going to get budget service, and a budget outcome.

 

[plhoang]

Originally Posted by raley

After this, he proceeded to tell me that he did not think I would be satisfied with the shirts that he was going to make me.

I think, on this, he was probably right.

 

[WestIndianArchie]

Originally Posted by realbespoke

the old saying "you get what you pay for!" First, If you showed him a split yoke and he did not know what it was, that was the grand opportunity to walk right out the door. Second, anyone who has seen any type of Mother of pearl button whether its Australian or not knows the difference between MOP and plastic! Typical of these guys though. They give the industry a bad name. And none of them are well dressed, ever! so why buy from a guy that looks worse than you? makes no sense.
We produce shirts with split yokes standard, MOP buttons standard, and we usually place the monograms inside the yoke. We only use the best Italian and English shirting cloth. The shirt is hand-made!
www.marlonaustin.com


You really need to shoot your web designer.

 

[Orsini]

Originally Posted by raley

In my quest for the perfectly fitted shirt (between Jantzen iterations, that is), I decided to pay Ram Keswani of mytailor.com a visit today in the Westin Galleria Hotel here in Houston.....
The customer is always right. It sounds to me like he was trolling for suckers and you did not bite. Good for you.