‘Sales don’t make me happy!’ said no one ever! But in this case, they really did! And it wasn’t just an unhappy feeling, it was feeling extremely disappointing.
What I Expected
Getting the opportunity to shop at one of the biggest shopping festivals in the world, was on my bucket list. Yes, shopping was on my bucket list. Now that I have made that declaration, let’s move past that. The Dubai Shopping Festival is one of the biggest and (what seems to be) exciting festivals in the world. Despite not planning my trip around it, I was about to get a glimpse of it, and I was excited!
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In Dubai, just to take a break from the regular routine and spend some time with my friends, one day I heard over the radio that the when the festival was about to begin in a couple of days. To be ‘well prepared’, my friend and I both slept off early the day before, woke up fresh, had a good breakfast and carried a suitcase with us, because we didn’t want to get tired carrying too many packets around.
We booked a cab to Mall of the Emirates and as we were walking past stores, doing our initial recce, we were excited to stores covered with banners that said SALE and 50% off, and Buy 1, Get 1 FREE! And then we were struck with reality!
What It Really Was
It was madness! The shops were extremely crowded, the sale sections inside the store were overflowing with clothes, shoes and products. A shelf that could accommodate just about 10 things, there were 20 on it.
The queues for the fitting rooms were long, the stores were overflowing with people; so much so the shop attendants were hardly paying any attention to queries because they were busy stacking up more clothes. While I gathered the courage to brave through it, and started sifting through the lot in one of the stores. And honestly, I could barely find anything worthy.
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No, don’t get wrong. I am not saying that the collection was bad or not up to the mark. All I am saying is that the after-sale cost wasn’t quite justified either. Many of you might feel that the quality of the clothes and the collection on display is far better, and that justifies it, but I will have to differ with you on that one too.
Sales Around The World
I have been lucky enough to travel around the world. Have been to Europe, the United States of America, Thailand, even the United Kingdom as well. Now someone like me who loves to shop, definitely makes time to visit her favourite brands. I wasn’t too happy with the collection available at some of the stores either; and a few of them did not have the right sizes either.
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The after-sale cost of clothes there, is something that you might find India at MRP. And I would like to highlight the fact that I wasn’t converting Dirhams in Rupees before picking something up for a try-out. So that, too, wasn’t a deciding factor either.
After walking around for quite a while and barely buying two or three things, my friend and I sat down for a meal. The only thing that seemed like value for money was that!