u/Hanar90

Today we had our appointment at the McNair Center at Guys St Thomas. We have severe male factor infertility.
I had anticipated that today’s appointment would be the first meeting with the ACU where funding (or next steps) was discussed/progressed.
Instead, it was like triage to then refer us on to the Guys St Thomas IVF unit.
This wasn’t made clear.
I thought the process was 1) GP referral (ours was in July), 2) meet with a consultant and progress with next steps/apply for funding. But this is a bit of an unexpected stop in the middle.

I’m wondering - does anyone have experience with this? What is the wait time between this triage appointment and actually meeting the IVF unit for funding to be applied for?!

Any help from those in the South London area would be great!

If you are considering L'Eto, please read this first.

Anya made me feel like a million dollars when I first met her. I have no doubt she has many happy brides - so long as nothing goes wrong with your dress. But if something does go wrong, expect someone who does not accept accountability, and deprioritises you. Her response to the below so far has been:

"The fabric is difficult, the cut is difficult, overseas brides are difficult, I should get a tan and my boobs are uneven."

When I commissioned my dress, Anya and I entered into the agreement knowing it would need to be made on a rush-fee, I would not be able to attend a final fitting as I am based in London and that I would need to get the dress tailored locally for "minor tweaks” to finish the dress off. Being based in London, I did not expect a finished product, but I did expect a dress crafted to a high standard that would allow for local fine-tuning. That is not what arrived.

What we agreed:
- A dress that would be to the standard of the sample dress I tried on
- The dress would be made extra long to accommodate a 6cm heel, hemmed locally
- The back would not be lowered, to cover a tattoo
- I loved how the sample bust sat on me and said so repeatedly. I deferred to Anya's expert guidance to lower it. In hindsight, I wish I hadn't.

What arrived was almost like a dress made for someone else. It was too short, too low and poorly made.

Specification failures:
- The hem arrived shorter than the sample I was told to reference, forcing me to change my wedding shoes
- The back, even when pulled in to its maximum extent, still exposed significantly more of my tattoo than the sample dress did
- The bust was so low my nipples were visible

Construction failures:
- The neckline scoop was asymmetrical: gentle on one side, sharp on the other
- The darts were uneven in length and placement and, due to how they were finished, could not be moved
- The hem was not only shorter than agreed but uneven, meaning the correction made it shorter still
- Lifting the neckline from the shoulders to make the dress wearable, on an already too-short dress, had significant knock-on effects throughout
- Even at maximum correction, the dress gaped at the front, requiring structural reinforcement across the back to keep it in place

What I anticipated as local fine-tuning became wholesale reconstruction.

The response:
- Four emails, a week of silence and an impromptu call before I got a reply
- No acknowledgment of a single failure. Not the shorter hem. Not the exposed tattoo. Not the construction defects. Nothing.
- When I pointed out the repeated failures, I was told she has many happy brides and that working with me has been a learning experience for working with non-local brides.

My misfortune, apparently, is a business lesson.

All of this could have been handled so differently. I didn't need perfection. I needed someone to say: this isn't the standard I hold myself to, let's fix it. Instead I was given the silent treatment and ultimately told to get a tan.

Initially I requested a 20% return on the dress and the cost of new wedding shoes, but it’s become clear this won’t be resolved without impartial intervention.
I have escalated this to NSW Fair Trading.

Additionally, I have left a Google review - the company’s response has been to get my name wrong (🫠), say that they were in regular contact with me and that I should have expected local tailoring - again completely ignoring that 1) they have largely ignored me and 2) local tailoring is not the issue here. The issue is that they delivered a poor product, that no amount of tailoring would fix without - as we’ve had to do - wholly changing the nature of the dress.

If nothing goes wrong, I’m sure you’ll have a great experience, but if something goes wrong - expect to be blamed and ignored.