Not recommended

I have a family of 5 and we moved from town to Rondebosch 2 years ago. I have been commuting to my tailor in town to do all our alterations , but realised it was time to find a tailor closer to home.

I found Tailor Cape Town through a Google search, and based on the info provided on their website I decided to try their store in Claremont as I had 3 garments that needed altering.

I was met by a rather unfriendly woman who didn’t seem terribly interested in assisting me. I thought she might just be having a bad day, so continued to be friendly while we discussed what needed to be done. After going back 3 times, I realised she seems to be having a bad day every day, but secretly hoped that she would make up for it in ability what she lacked in customer care.

The manner in which she pinned the garments seemed very careless to me. The one dress had an uneven hem that needed to be straightened, yet she only used one pin to mark where she intended to alter it. I wasn’t sure how she was going to be able to straighten the seam without pinning the whole hem, but didn’t question this, as I assumed she knew what she was doing. As a result, I wasn’t able to accurately see how long the dress would be after alterations, but explained I wanted the dress to be half a cm from the floor all round.

After going back to try the dress on, it was much too short. She simply responded that she pinned it at that length. The additional alterations around the waist made the dress very ill fitting, but the seamstress saw no issue with it and told me a belt would sort it out.

I also had a pair of trousers that needed a sliding catch replaced with a button. She advised she didn’t have the right machine to make button holes, but that she would remove the slider and refer me to someone up the road who could make the button hole and fit the button. I left the trousers along with a bag of assorted buttons with her without discussing which button to use as we agreed she would not be doing this.

I was surprised to find on my return that she had a buttonhole made and randomly chose a button to sew on. As the hole was made to fit the button it could not be changed for a different sized button. When I pointed out that it was not the button I was planning to add to the trousers she became very agitated. When I went into the changing room she muttered to her colleague ”this woman is full of ****”. Initially I thought I heard wrong, but then she repeated it a second time!

I came out and asked why she thought it was ok to swear at her customers through the curtain, but she didn’t respond to this.

The third garment needed 2 slits added on the sides (this was on her recommendation) and again she only used one pin on one side. So on my return I discovered that they only added one slit. She even had the audacity to blame it on the guy helping her with the work, even though he was clearly only following her instructions.

Lastly, there was no pricing structure anywhere and I was quoted R180 per dress to do the alterations. It sounded expensive to me, but I had nothing but her word to go on.

I paid her in full, but had to take the ill fitting dress to another taylor to fix.

I brought the above up with management and they addressed this with the employee. I believe the employee has subsequently received a warning as there was no record of payment received from me and their receipt for my alteration was missing.

I asked if they would consider doing a refund as I had to pay someone else to fix the alteration and they advised they would get back to me. After following up 2x times, I still haven't heard back about this.

All in all a very disappointing, costly and frustrating experience!