Tailor may hold pants hostage

April 23, 2024 8:14 AM

I went to a tailor who I've gone to not often but before. I brought in cuffed pants that I needed shortened. I tried the pants on, he measured and charged me $28 which felt like alot and were almost half the price of the pants.

I came back a week later to no cuff, straight hemmed pants. I was upset because I loved these pants and the cuff makes these pants what they are. I told him I didn't ask for the cuff to be removed. He said that cuffed hem is different and costs more. That he didn't think I was 80 years old and would want that style. That didn't really address my issue. We stood there going back and forth about it. I said that the style of the pants were ruined. I was very upset. I asked what could be done. He said that he could check with his tailor (who is offsite) to see if the material was still there but they may have thrown out them. He said I would need to leave the pants so that the tailor could see which cuff to look for. I was so upset and confused that I left but brought the pants back the next day. I asked him to see if his tailor still has the cuff and that I want him to send the cuffs back. He said ok and he would call me. He called me 2 days later and said that his tailor made the cuffs, it would be $10 more and I can pick them up. I called him back and told him absolutely not. I didn't ask for his tailor to make cuffs, I just wanted mine back. He said they threw them out and his tailor spent hours on making a new cuff. I am now livid and don't know what to do. That will be $38 for his mistake which is over half of what I paid for the pants.

I'm worried that he will not give me my pants back unless I pay the extra $10 which feels wrong. He didn't call and tell me the extra charge for something I didn't ask for. Outside of just running out the store with my pants like a thief, what can I say to get my pants back and not pay the $10. I'm open to other options as well.

posted by ColdIcedT to Shopping (20 answers total)

Pay the extra $10 and consider this a learning experience about clear communication when interacting with service providers. It sounds like the cost would have been $38 for cuffed hems anyway ("cuffed hem is different and costs more"); the tailor is doing you a big favour by accommodating your wishes without charging you for the extra time they spent reconstructing cuffs for your pants after you didn't communicate what you wanted clearly enough.
posted by heatherlogan at 8:21 AM on April 23 [55 favorites]

It was your tailor's job to communicate to you that the cuffs would be taken off. Lots of customers don't know what the mechanics of tailoring are, nor do they know what the work will involve in terms of what will happen exactly to their item of clothing. And that's normal. You are not the professional, he is. He knows the ins and outs of what goes into the tailoring job. It was his responsibility to communicate better, and he failed. This was part of his actual job.

Next, after ruining your pants, he failed to take responsibility and apologize, and he even tried to blame you? and shame your fashion sense?? WTF. That was completely unprofessional.

And *then*, on top of it all, he misled you completely about getting your original cuffs back, ***once again failed to communicate accurately with you about the work he was planning to do on your pants*** and just .. did whatever he pleased. Now he expects you to pay for it.

Nope. Nope nope nope.

Have you already paid this man $28? If not, then just ghost him and buy a new pair of pants. You can also dispute the charge on your credit card if you have already been charged the $28.

For future reference, however, tailoring costs more than you think. This man's charges were not unreasonable - his communication, his customer service, his professionalism, and his work were all bad but his charges were completely reasonable. I would expect to pay at least $50 to get cuffed pants hemmed and I live in a medium col area.
posted by MiraK at 8:23 AM on April 23 [12 favorites]

I feel you on this, but I think you may need to just pay the money to get your pants back, and then leave them a negative review on Yelp.

Some detailed thoughts:

1. When you originally brought the pants in, did you expressly say that you wanted them to keep the cuff on when they were shortened? If not, you may not be able to complain about that as such. (Don't worry, you have another reason to complain.)

2. It sounds like you told him that you wanted your cuffs back. I'd take a minute and think about how clearly you communicated this; if you can confidently say that "I want MY ORIGINAL cuffs back, and if your tailor doesn't have them please call me first before doing anything" then yeah, you can complain about that. If not...maybe not.

3. The prices they quoted you sound about right, unfortunately.

4. Seriously, he said "he didn't think [you] were 80 years old and would want that style"? Rude! That ALONE would be reason to leave a nasty review, to my mind.

But yeah, pay the $10 to get your pants back and go to another tailor. Maybe if you explain the situation they can cut you a break. But you may still have to pay.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:28 AM on April 23 [4 favorites]

I had 2 pairs of pants hemmed recently in Seattle, that's a regular price.

My pants were both different (jeans/western slacks, not pleated/pleated, wildly different ankle openings) and I completely froze when the tailor was talking with me in the dressing room. It just isn't an interaction that I normally have. Last time was 10 years ago, replacing a zipper, and this had a lot more questions about style/fit/how I'm wearing them/etc. The tailor spoke multiple languages as well as knowing all the tailor specific terminology. I was self conscious about coming off like a rich asshole (I'm not! This is cheaper than buying new pants!) and I messed up the interaction. I ended up with the jeans fitting great and the dress pants riding up almost to the top of my shins! Those pants were cheaper and in the end no one but me really cares is pants are slightly too high.

So along with just wanting to share that (where else can I share my tailor story that is incredibly boring?) I wanted to say that you and the tailor were both trying pretty hard to communicate and failed, but you didn't get tricked out of money here. Its just the way things go sometimes.
posted by kittensofthenight at 8:50 AM on April 23 [7 favorites]

I can’t imagine a way to resolve this that won’t cost more than $10 worth of your time in arguing with this guy or tanking his Yelp reviews or whatever. I would probably just pay the $10, and consider it a lesson in crystal clear communication with tailors in future. I would probably have made the same assumption you did about the hemming including cuffs, he should have been clearer about it, but how much of your time is it worth to fight about it?
posted by Stacey at 8:51 AM on April 23 [6 favorites]

I expect that you'll find that the new cuffs are attached to the pants and that they are now ready to wear, in case that wasn't clear.
posted by heatherlogan at 9:07 AM on April 23 [3 favorites]

he measured and charged me $28 which felt like alot and were almost half the price of the pants.

The price of the pants has nothing to do with the price of the tailoring. In fact, more expensive clothing is often better made in the first place, making it easier to tailor than cheap clothing. Your tailor didn't make the pants, sell the pants or choose the pants. Their effort is the same or more because you paid less for the pants, not less.

Now, your argument that they should have clearly asked whether you wanted the pants cuffed or not cuffed before they removed the cuffs, that has some obvious merit. Of course they should have been clear on that and it was bad service not to and worse service to then *insult* you when you came back to ask about it.

Hemming pants with a cuffed hem is typically 25-30% more than tailoring pants with a plain hem, so I don't think they're wildly overcharging you by adding $10 to $28 for the original hemming. If I were them, I would probably waive the extra $10 to fix the problem and apologize for the inconvenience of you having to come back twice, but they aren't outright scamming you by not doing that, just charging you what they would have charged you in the first place.

So, pay the $10, get your pants back, say shitty things about their terrible, rude, insulting customer service in your online review.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:31 AM on April 23 [10 favorites]

Go pay $10 more, get your pants, and then never go back to this tailor. Anything else involves a lot of anger and frustration and stewing.

And yes, tailoring is expensive.
posted by bluedaisy at 10:07 AM on April 23 [15 favorites]

If you were to add an extra zero to all those numbers, you have a sum of money that’s worth arguing about. At these prices, just take the loss and pay the guy. It’s not worth the stress & bad karma to argue over it.
posted by rd45 at 10:44 AM on April 23 [6 favorites]

So a couple things are going on here.

First: fewer people are getting things hemmed and overall tailored these days. Accordingly, prices are up, because they aren't making it up in volume. Additionally, labor costs are higher in a lot of cities that have regular tailoring. 10$ for a hem used to be normal prices - it's not anymore. I walked in to get something tailored recently and walked right out because the prices quoted to me were similar - about half the cost of the clothing.

This is not "normal tailoring prices" historically, but it is normal tailoring prices now.

Also, the skilled tailors are aging out of the business. When I was young, you would have a number of skilled tailors who did their work primarily before ready made clothes were as ubiquitous, and when people readily sewed their clothes at home. Those people are dead or retired now. The people that would understand that of course you wanted things in the style that they came in with, and knew intuitively how to handle your material? Those people are gone. We didn't know how good we had it, in the 80s and 90s and even early 2000s. Now, you have people who have learned to sew professionally, but don't necessarily understand fabric and people's preferences around fabric in the same way. You notice his tailor is "offsite" - basically, he's farming the work out to someone else who doesn't even necessarily work primarily for the business and doesn't get to learn customers. Thus the issue.

That said, you're not going to get your pants back unless you pay. So pick your battles.
posted by corb at 11:42 AM on April 23 [9 favorites]

I totally get this - it's not that $10 is so much money it's that you don't feel it's right in principle that you should pay extra for their mistake. Most anyone would feel that way. BUT:
Yes while he was negligent in explaining to you about taking off the cuff. However, he's a tailor, not a PR person, and he just didn't realize that it wasn't obvious about the cuff. He wasn't trying to scam you or cheat you. He just didn't communicate well enough and it resulted in a misunderstanding. Try to take the sting out of this by remembering that it was not done "to" you, it was just that you had different ideas and while the ball should have been in his court, it didn't occur to him.
For some reason on AskMe I've noticed that answers against the customer always get a ton of likes. You didn't do anything wrong and most anyone would be upset by this experience. But try to take the emotion out of it because it will be better and cheaper for you in the long run to just pay him for his work and not have to replace these pants.
posted by rainy day girl at 11:56 AM on April 23 [2 favorites]

Depending on how much you wanted the pants shortened, it may have been extremely difficult to do with a cuff. This is why men's pants are most traditionally sold with unfinished legs. Anyway, it's pretty typical that when cuffed pants are altered they wind up without a cuff. This, of course, depends on where new cuff will end up relative to the existing cuff. Cuffs are usually between 1.6 and 2 inches. If the pants need to be shortened by 6 inches, no big deal. But, generally speaking, you need around 4 additional inches beyond the desired hemline to create the cuff. So, if the pants are going to be shortened three inches and cuffs are desired, that's going to be complicated at best and potentially impossible to do while looking nice. It's also possible to make and apply faux-cuffs, which can be great if you want an angled cuff. One way in which cuffs can be great, especially with things like cotton twill that really like to hold on to dirt and oil, is to get the pants with a cuff and a half- to a three-quarter break, and then when the cuffs start not looking so nice, have the tailor turn them into un-cuffed pants.

Anyway, considering that the cost would have been $38 for cuffs, I wouldn't begrudge them the ten bucks over what you paid. $38 is absolutely a reasonable price for shortening pants and creating a cuff, even if it is half what you paid for the pants. Tailoring is skilled labor with more or less a fixed cost regardless of the cost paid for the garment that's being altered. On the other side of the coin, if would have been a nice gesture for the shop to comp you the additional cost in consideration of their mistake. But, to me, ten dollars would be worth it just to keep a tailor shop in business and sometimes mistakes are made. It sounds like you got good service from them on previous tailoring work, so I'd encourage you to think of it like an off night at a good restaurant and just pay the customary amount. It's not like they're getting a huge margin on this sort of thing. Even the full price isn't bad. I recently had a pair of heavy tweed pants shortened and cuffed, which involved taking out some fullness in the back of the legs to make it drape right, and it cost 175 bucks.
posted by slkinsey at 12:10 PM on April 23 [3 favorites]

I don’t understand why the tailor took in cuffed pants and hemmed them straight. To me, I would think if someone brought me cuffed pants to take up, they are saying, “I want it like this, but shorter.”

Then again, I don’t understand why the knife sharpener I took my knives to ground my serrated bread knife straight. Why would anybody do that? It never occurred to me to say to a knife sharpener, “This is a serrated knife. I want it to be serrated when you give it back.”

Long story short, it turns out that everybody doesn't think that the same things are obvious, and next time you do have to say, “I want them just like this, except shorter.” I would pay the $10 and still be mad, but at least you could have your pants back, fitting correctly.
posted by toodleydoodley at 2:15 PM on April 23 [2 favorites]

Whenever I hear similar complaints about cost : expectation = > frustration, I give the same advice: if you were this miffed or frustrated about anything in your life and a magical fairy came to you and said, "I'll solve this problem for $10," would you pay it?

Of course you would.

And if I'm then told that that will lead to a different frustration at feeling you'd been duped, hoodwinked, ripped off, etc, I'd say you need to get your priorities straight and think about your own mental health more than your finances.

And the next time you're dealing with anyone in the service industry, clearly communicate what you want: "I want these pants to look just like this, but with my inseam. How much will that cost?"

Yes, the tailor should have said, "Do you want us to keep the cuff?" But since not everyone's great at communicating, it makes it more important that you do so yourself.

Personally, with the exception of the communication issue, I think the tailor went above and beyond in looking for your cuffs and fixing the situation. It certainly cost them more than the $10 they would have charged had they done it from the get go as much more work was involved!
posted by dobbs at 2:28 PM on April 23 [2 favorites]

I’m only just now realizing OP didn’t explicitly ask for cuffs. Yeah, this is just a misunderstanding that the tailor went above and beyond to rectify. There would be no expectation that off-the-rack pants with a pre-sewn cuff should remain cuffed after being shortened. Indeed, as the tailor alluded to, uncuffed (and closely tailored) is the fashion these days—especially for those under the age of, say, fifty. I don’t think he was wrong in assuming you wanted uncuffed unless cuffs were explicitly specified. I like a cuff on all but the most formal suit pants and always make sure I mention this to the alterations tailor along with my preference in cuff height.

It’s a bit like taking shoes to be re-soled. It’s normal for the shop to apply colored polish and shine the shoes as part of the service. If I have shoes with a special color or patina I make sure I am very clear that I don’t want them polished, but only buffed up. In one instance when I didn’t say so, I got back a patinaed pair of mid-brown shoes with a nicely even darker brown all over. My bad.
posted by slkinsey at 3:08 PM on April 23 [3 favorites]

The process takes time to measure, they have to pay for a location, and do the sewing, deal with customers. $28 for the work is roughly 18 - 19/ hour for somebody. Clothing is really pretty cheap, but tailoring is custom work and expensive, for a reason. They probably should have asked, but they didn't, and you didn't specify, and it's a small business. Think about how much you want the pants with cuffs. You could buy another pair, ask them to re-do the work at their cost, or just have the pair with no cuffs. I understand it's a disappointment, it sucks a bit.
posted by theora55 at 5:31 PM on April 23

I used to get dresses shortened, pants hemmed, etc. Then the pandemic happened and I stopped buying clothes that needed to be shortened, I guess.
I was going to a newish tailor across town that I found fairly expensive (but the work was good so I just chalked it up to the prices of services going up, just like many prices have gone up.) Her cost to shorten a dress is around $25-$30. I found a new tailor closer to me, and I read the reviews that said she was good and reasonably priced. I took a too-long dress to be shortened and realized that it was going to be $40. So next time, I'll go back to the tailor across town (there are other shops near there that I like to visit occasionally) or I'll continue using this one, if the dress looks good when I pick it up soon.
Anytime someone does something for me that I can't do for myself that's a service, I figure, it costs what it costs. This person has expertise that I don't, so I pay what they ask. C'est la vie.
posted by 41swans at 6:35 PM on April 23

I am probably not bringing anything new to the table here but I agree this just sounds like a miscommunication. I am short so I get a lot of stuff taken up, and in my entire life I've only ever met one tailor that was good at customer service. They always get the job done though, so it's fine. This may be regional (I'm in NZ) but here you absolutely have to specify you want the original hem if you don't just want it shortened, and it's always extra money.

So, with all this in mind, I would pay the $10 and move on. The only thing I might leave a review on is how he was rude to you (the comment about being 80 years old) because that sucks. Everything else sounds like it could be a shared misunderstanding.
posted by BeeJiddy at 10:29 PM on April 23

You didn't communicate clearly in the first instance, then you were upset about the results, so the tailor tried to make you happy (by making you cuffs you so obviously wanted to have). Then you were unhappy again.

The tailor's communication could've been better too, I agree. But you can't change anything about that.

Don't leave a negative review on Yelp, because you're not completely in the right here either.

Right now the best solution is to pay $38 (which honestly is not a lot, considering the time and material used by the tailor) and never go to that tailor again - because you'll both be unhappy to see each other again.
posted by gakiko at 12:33 AM on April 24 [1 favorite]

Cutting through all the emotions: Your pants are now shortened and have a cuff. Seems worth paying the extra ten bucks for.
posted by oneirodynia at 11:51 AM on April 24 [1 favorite]