Friday, December 31, 2010

Online suit review: Suitopia.com




Suitopia is another online budget made to measure suit shop. It is slightly dearer than the previous website I reviewed. The layout of the site itself is quite nice and neat. They offer Suits, Tuxedos, Morning coats, Frock coats and Evening tails. I decided to go for a two-piece in a fabric from their second cheapest selection (a waistcoat is an extra €90!).

The fabric selection they have is quite good considering the budget nature of the website. They even offer denim and corduroy. I decided on a fabric called "Grey beige". It is not a deceptive name and it is essentially the same as pictured on the website. I must confess to being a little surprised by my choice of fabric when it arrived. It isn't a colour I'd usually choose but nonetheless it is of acceptable quality.

The sleeves of the jacket are pleasantly narrow for a made to measure suit, especially since I didn't have the option to insert my bicep or wrist measurements. The buttons, which were one of the great failings of the Tailor4Less suit, are nice enough. They're not of any great quality obviously but they are perfectly acceptable.

Just like Tailor4Less the suit was very quick and it was 8 days from order to door. The whole process was really quite easy and satisfactory, especially if you already have a recent set of measurements so there is no measuring required. I will say, however, that some of the additions seem to cost disproportionatley more than other websites (I mentioned the waistcoat above). All in all though, I think that I will be ordering from these people more often despite the small price increase.

5 comments:

  1. There are some of the reputed custom tailors where you can go without hesitate
    Suitopia
    Tailor4Less
    Indochino
    Tailor4Less
    Toms Fashion

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  2. To Suitopia’s credit the fabric was good quality and the color exactly matched what I saw on their website, also the fit of the trousers was very nearly as good as my local tailor.

    The jacket sleeves are noticeably shorter than the other 2 jackets I got elsewhere, despite being based on the same measurements. This isn’t a deal breaker, but it does render this (otherwise well fitting) jacket the least good fit of the 3.

    I can’t say that I was pleased with their vest; however this could be just a matter of personal preference. On a good day, I would describe as sparse, on a bad day flimsy/cheap feeling, meanwhile my local tailor’s was moderate and balanced, and itailor’s was substantial – which I like, but others may say it is a touch bulky. I personally didn’t like Suitopia’s vest while I did like the other 2, but others may not share my sentiment on this point.

    The lining Suitopia used was less well tailored into the jacket and vest, and seemed like a cheap, corner-cutting, after thought compared to the other 2 services I used both of whom used substantially better quality and better integrated lining – as far as I can tell. The main fabric felt like it met the (just under) $500 price tag, the lining did not.

    All of these flaws and misgivings I could overlook but for what happened around custom service issues.

    I initially ordered this suit in January.

    Come March I was wondering when I should expect my suit (since the iTailor one had long since arrived), so I logged back in to check and found that my credit card had been rejected and thus the order hadn’t gone through.

    Indeed, a closer inspection of my e-mail revealed that I had missed a message informing me of this later on the same day that I ordered.

    My bad, not theirs.

    That being the case I went ahead and reordered the suit in April with a different credit card which was not rejected.

    It arrived in a timely fashion and while I wasn’t entirely pleased with it, at that time I didn’t consider writing a negative review because I didn’t expect perfection and was basically satisfied with what they delivered.

    It is now August and last week a totally unexpected package turned up from Suitopia. I have not opened it, but it apparently contains a replica of suit that I ordered before.

    As near as I can understand what they did was when I ordered the 2nd suit with the different credit card they retroactively applied the new credit card to the old lapsed order which they themselves had cancelled due to non-payment.

    Exactly why they did this 4 months after the 2nd order and 7 months after the initial order is beyond me.

    In trying to deal with customer services they are totally unrepentant and are blaming me because I didn’t cancel the order – which I obviously didn’t need to do since they had already cancelled it at their end.

    At best they are totally unwilling to take responsibility for the flaw in their online order system that took it upon itself to hijack my 2nd credit card and apply to the earlier order without my permission.

    At worst they looked at their balance sheet and decided they needed another $500 to meet their monthly target and decided to abuse the complications in my earlier transactions to cash in.

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  3. What Suitopia does isn't to be called a suit. It's closer to a costume for movies from the 80's. While they are responsive they don't go beyond standard. Not worth considering.

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  4. DO NOT ORDER!!!

    I ordered a suit through them and had payment accepted on May 9th. At that time their website stated you would receive your suit in about 2-3 weeks after payment. Today is 3 weeks and the suit is still in "production". I emailed them and they said they would be unable to accommodate the 3 week term. Luckily I bought and had a suit tailored because this company is so unreliable. I will be doing a charge-back through my bank/credit card company.

    ALSO: On May 29th, they secretly updated their order shipping FAQ to about 4-5 weeks on their website. I took a screenshot of that and I pulled up a google cached page that shows 2-3 weeks. The funny thing is they can't even make the 4-5 week claim.

    DO NOT PURCHASE

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  5. Nice post! I agree that Suitopia’s suits are good. However, have you ever tried bespoke suit online? It is my platform to buy suits for every occasion. I would recommend you to try it once!

    ReplyDelete