For Melissa Tang, her wedding dress is much more than just a gift from her parents.
“It is the dress you start your new life in,” she said.
That dress was a stunning part of Melissa’s beautiful wedding video. She and her husband Morris wanted to keep the designer dress looking lovely so they decided to have it cleaned and preserved.
The Bridal shop she picked had already done a fine job on the alterations so she was confident the dress was in good hands.
“I trusted her completely to preserve and clean the dress for me “Melissa said.
She was told it would take several weeks to have the dress ready. After waiting a month she sent an email to the shop but got no response.
Then, in the middle of June, she started calling and it went straight to the fax machine.
Melissa tried again a few weeks later but when she still wasn’t getting a response she began to worry.
It was time for her to go back to med school in New York, so she asked her husband to stop by the Tremont street shop to check on the dress.
Morris said when he walked up to it and saw the lights were off he realized that the entire store was dark and emptied out.
The business, the owners and the dress had vanished. Neighbors told Morris the business had moved out months ago.
Panicked, he decided not to tell his new bride.
“She couldn’t have done anything while in New York anyway, as my husbandly duty, I’ll take care of it,” he said.
Morris tried social media. He called the Better Business Bureau, even the District Attorney and Attorney General. Still no dress.
With nowhere else to turn, he reached out to Solve it 7.
We asked our expert Bob Harnais, “How do you go after a business that no longer exists?”
“If something like that occurs, you have to be proactive. You can’t sit back,” he said.
Even though the Tangs dropped the dress off at the shop, it’s still their dress and they have the right to get it back.
“The fact that they’re not answering, the fact that they took my property, this could be considered a criminal act on their part,” Harnais said.
Solve it 7 sent the owners of the shop an email about Melissa’s dress and while we didn’t hear back directly Morris finally got a response.
“When I contacted you that’s when the wheels started moving,” he said.
They told Morris that the dress was being shipped out immediately and within a week of our email Melissa’s perfectly preserved dress showed up on their doorstep.
“I don’t know how else we would have gotten the dress back,” she said.
Remember, you’re a consumer and you have a right to get what you pay for; in this case a preserved wedding dress. But if you feel like someone’s giving you the runaround we want to hear from you. Email us at solveit7@whdh.com or find us on twitter @solveit7.