Elizabeth Suzann operations and customer service
Not sure if anyone has purchased anything from ES lately - I am a long-time customer and back in April, I placed the first order I've made in awhile for some washable silk pieces. Total was over $1k, but I appreciate her option to put a 50% deposit down and then allow the rest to be charged "close to when your order ships." I've used this option with her store in the past. However, this round really soured me on purchasing anything from her in the future for the following reasons:
- Their only way of updating you on the status of your order is their Production Status page - and this isn't updated regularly. I was checking for months and it seemed like my order was supposed to have been finished, but there was no other details.
- They charged me for the second half of my order without any heads up AND without sending any shipping information. I understand I agreed to this, but when your lead times are 12(ish) weeks out and you charge so much for your clothing, it feels like a courtesy to give people a day or two heads up that you'll be charging another $500.
- re: shipping - I never got any shipping information sent to me via email. I eventually resorted to logging onto the website to confirm it had indeed shipped and there was a tracking code.
- Because they had charged me and not sent any confirmation that an order was actually on its way, I ended up emailing support (many places on her website say "feel free to email us with questions about your order!"). It was a nice email but I was basically saying hey, I saw the charge which I'm assuming means my order is coming - can you confirm the status of my order and/or send me the shipping info? At this point the Production Status page was still showing the same old information it had been showing for months.
- Aaaaaaaaand they never emailed me back. But a couple days later I noticed they updated their Production Status page saying that what I had ordered should be shipping "by the end of July." And that's when I logged in to search manually for my tracking info.
Again I'm a long-time customer and I've experienced really thoughtful customer service from them in the past, but I see they no longer can bother with any response or updating people on their (very expensive) orders. When I see much smaller companies like Kampeon sending diligent updates on status and delays via email, I know it's possible. This has nothing to do with the quality of the clothing - so far I'm pleased with the items I recently bought and I'm still loving the older ES items I have, but I think this is the end for me in terms of purchasing anything new from them. Even a canned response that was like "hey FYI we are behind but if you're asking about status and were recently charged, check your account for the shipping info" would have been acceptable to me. Having to dig for my own info on a $1k order sucks. Never receiving a response sucks.
She recently took the whole website down and included "it's in the works!" (previously you could at least check the Production Status page with a rough estimate on the month your order would be shipping) and with the support email....good luck getting a response though. I understand there is a lot going on, they're a small operation...but basic communication and customer service is lacking here.