Quote Originally Posted by denmcdough View Post
[COLOR="Navy"]Time for another chime. Many who have posted on this thread have totally missed the point! This is NOT about bad measurements. It's about bad construction....the mathematics of the pleats and the construction are all off.
Not necessarily. For instance, I think that both Jock Scot and I have been trying to express that IF it were feasible/practical to be physically present during the construction phase, it might be far easier and quicker to spot such shortcomings in construction and mathematical errors in the pleats that you speak of, rather than having to wait for the entire garment to be completed, shipped, evaluated, then returned in the event of problems. That is the chance we take when we order clothes over the Internet (something that traditionally, most of us wouldn't have ever dreamed of buying some years ago, without having tried them on first).

Again, I'm not saying that we should settle for inferior products here, but we are (in my opinion) dealing with an inherently flawed process. With all due respect to GG, I fully sympathize with his concerns and asking the question "1) How likely is it that you should deliver me a kilt looking like that?" But that is, quite simply an unreasonable question to have answered. And if I were a kiltmaker being asked that question, I would have to answer that: if someone had concerns about the quality and construction of their kilt, they'd be more than welcome to come in person and inspect the work-in-progress and get a guided tour of our facilities. However barring that, they would simply have to take it on our good word that we were doing our best to construct the kilt in a quality, proper manner.

What it comes down to is this. In any industry, there will always be an element of trust involved... You have to trust that things are normally done up-to-spec. As I sit here in my office at work even, I have to have SOME trust in that the building was built up to code, and that I WON'T have iron i-beams falling out of the ceiling and onto my head... I have to trust that the chair I'm sitting in, (even though it was assembled on an assembly line by a minimum-wage paid worker) was constructed properly, and won't break under me. We have to make hundreds of such assumptions in our everyday lives, every single day -- but we choose not to dwell on them or bring them into question.

However, if you MUST bring it into question, and if you cannot naturally ASSUME that a company will do something right, then you should really be looking for a new company to do business with. Find a company that you CAN extend such trust to. I don't mean to sound harsh or unsympathetic, but it really IS important to give the benefit of the doubt. GG himself readily admitted that he has a wide range of kilts, from cheap Pakistani ones to nice woolen ones, and that none of them suffer from the problems he illustrated in the photo. That tells me something -- and it should tell Greg something too... That it is not the usual state of affairs for ANY company, and that the photo presents an anomaly. If it were not so, Tartanweb, who have been around since 1989 (according to their website), would have long gone out of business. Again, not trying to defend Tartanweb necessarily, but we shouldn't let the unfortunate experience of one individual undo over 20 years' worth of kiltmaking...