A wedding dress made of raincoat material, one that arrived six inches too small just three days before the wedding and dresses that do not even arrive are among online shopping horror stories being reported by customers.
Deborah Baker, owner of Garment Alteration Salon in the Bay of Plenty, said at least one distraught woman had sought her help to fix their online dress disaster each week in the past year.
"I do thousands of the damned things," she said.
"It's just about constant. When you buy online the guarantee it will fit is just about zero.
Most of the time the problem was women not willing to admit their true size and ordering sizes too small, she said.
Ms Baker said she was regularly having to open up the backs of dresses and add lacing to make them bigger.
"I actually think it just looks cheap and nasty," she said.
She discouraged people from shopping online but said a simple solution was just to buy a size bigger, because it could always be taken in but could not always be let out.
Vanilla Bridal owner Debbie Maguigan said each wedding season she would see at least six distraught brides walk through her doors, desperate for a dress.
"You see the three days before the wedding disaster where no dress has arrived," she said. "I've seen disaster after disaster after disaster."
Some dresses were salvageable but for many it meant paying more money to buy a new one, she said.
One of the worst cases she had seen was a dress ordered online that was supposed to be made of satin but was instead made of parker nylon, the material raincoats are often made out of. "My advice to people is just to stay away from online dress shopping."
Eve Bills, a Tauranga seamstress who retired at the end of last year, said she had also been kept busy altering dresses bought online.
"It's very common that a lot of people buy online, only to be so disappointed because the garments are made poorly," she said. "I had a lovely lady last year that brought a wedding dress and got it very late.
"There was nothing I could do to help her. The dress didn't fit by about six inches."
Consumer NZ adviser Paul Doocey said people needed to be careful if buying items online from overseas companies and make sure they were reputable.
- Amy McGillivray of the Bay of Plenty Times
