Do Your Research (aka Buyer Beware)

[M. A. C. Newsome]

Just out of curiosity, how was the 'dispute' resolved? Did they keep the kilt or did you accept the return?

I've had a few similar type situations, so I completely empathise. It's not easy when you are a small company working on small marjins to allow for any / all returns (like this one).

I'm still in communications with the client (which is why I didn't mention any names or even the tartan specifics). But I have to say while on the one hand I generally want to do all I can to satisfy a client and make sure they are happy with their purchase, especially for an expensive item like this, I don't feel like there is very much I can do unless I want to really take a wash on the kilt.

The truth is that there is really very little profit margin in an item like this. I don't know if people realize this or not. I think the general perception is that "I'm buying a really expensive item, therefore the merchant is making a lot of money from this sale." Not true. When you tally up the cost of having the cloth custom woven, then shipped to the kiltmakers, the cost of making the kilt, then shipping to us, the amount of profit we actually make on a kilt like this is amazingly small. We actually make more money when we sell an casual kilt in a stock tartan, even though that kilt may cost almost $500 less.

And I wish we sold a million kilts and could afford to take back an item, no questions asked, and just absorb the loss into our budget. Sadly, though, our budget doesn't allow for that, which is why we generally handle this kind of thing on a case by case basis.

And in this case, the client was very specific on the phone about wanting the "modern" tartan. We had no reason to believe there was going to be an issue.

In hindsight, the client was most likely looking at the image on Scotweb, which shows the ancient colors, despite being labelled modern, and just assumed that was what the "modern" tartan looked like and that is what they would be getting. But we just can't be held responsible for an error on someone else's web site.

As a side note, sometimes we can tell when talking to someone that they are confused as to the proper terminology, and we make every effort to clarify. I had a phone call once from someone looking to buy garters to match their "ancient Bruce" kilt. They wanted to know if the "ancient red" garters were orange, as they appeared in the photo on our web site. I said yes, because in the ancient colors, red fades to orange. He said it wouldn't match his kilt because his kilt was red, not orange. I asked if his tartan might not be modern Bruce. He assured me it was ancient Bruce. I told him then the ancient red flashes should match. Again, he told me his kilt was red, not orange. So I told him to order the modern red flashes. But, he argued, his kilt was in the ancient colors. Obviously we were miscommunicating. I finally just said, "When you look at your kilt, would you describe it as red or orange?" He said, "red." I told him, "Ok, I'll send garters to match" and we just didn't worry about what they were called. :-)

That wasn't the case with this kilt order. The client seemed very certain on the phone about having the tartan woven in the modern colors, so that's what we did. I never saw any reason to doubt them. Usually when people are confused as to the colors of a tartan, they are calling a tartan "ancient" when it is not. I don't typically encounter confusion over the term "modern" being applied to ancient colors.

[Dianne B]

That's sad, for all parties involved!

As a buyer, if I were going to order anything "custom" for which there was no illustration on the maker's web site, I would certainly submit a picture and say "Like this!" (to heck with names) on the assumption that the picture would be passed to the weaver as reference. If the final product looked somewhat close to the picture, good enough.

If I was REALLY going to be fussy, I would ask for samples of the various yarns so I could see the shades of colours - but then again I have done some weaving so I know how hard it can be to get exact shades of colours.

[ccga3359]

Matt it's sad to hear and unfortunatly there is a customer that is not happy with his experience with STA even though you did every thing possible. i recall when you made my kilt in MacLachlan ancient we had a discussion over which colour garters. In my case the ancient red was too orange and the modern red was too red. Fortunately I have both and now I can wear the hue that matches my mood that day. I hope that the customer can look beyond the colour shades and see that he as a one of a kind work of kilted art.

[M. A. C. Newsome]

Matt it's sad to hear and unfortunatly there is a customer that is not happy with his experience with STA even though you did every thing possible. i recall when you made my kilt in MacLachlan ancient we had a discussion over which colour garters. In my case the ancient red was too orange and the modern red was too red. Fortunately I have both and now I can wear the hue that matches my mood that day. I hope that the customer can look beyond the colour shades and see that he as a one of a kind work of kilted art.

Thanks Grant. And that's the thing, I inspected the kilt before I sent it out and it's really a great kilt! The tartan is lovely, the kilt is very well made. It's one anyone would be proud to wear.

BTW, I assume you meant STM, not STA, above.
~M

[ccga3359]

BTW, I assume you meant STM, not STA, above.
~M

You Sir, are correct, and when I do eventually make it to the Scottish Tartans Museum I'll not make that mistake so easily.