THIS week the stickers and banners have gone up all over London. Sales season is upon us. But, before you brave the glossy shops of Knightsbridge and Bond Street and pick up that discounted silk shirt or cut-price designer frock you couldn’t previously have afforded without a second mortgage, beware.

My own sorry saga began when I bought two suits and a cotton polo in the last Guy Laroche sale. At £760, including £40 for initial alterations, this was a high price for a couple of outfits. But many of us happily fork out under the pressure tactics of designer boutique sales assistants for slashed-price, end-of-season clothes with pre-sale price tags suggesting the garments are sewn with 18 carat gold. My mistake was not to pay so much, but to pay so much for clothes that I could not immediately walk away wearing. One suit needed just the buttons to be moved. A job executed perfectly. However, the £312 brown suit, a Herms-style riding jacket and skirt, needed more work. On 11 January Michelle Cuiec, the manageress, agreed that with a little nip and tuck for £20, the skirt would be more to my taste. Their delightful tailor pinned it.

When I returned to Bond Street to collect it, the skirt had been shortened, but not tapered as I’d asked. So they did it again. When I went back at the end of February, it still wasn’t done as I wanted. They did it yet again. Sometimes they made me pay for the alterations, sometimes they were free.

Once the skirt was changed, the jacket appeared proportionally too big. Being neither a professional seamstress nor fashion vendeuse, I’d have been grateful for prior notice of this simple aesthetic snare. Now the jacket badly required alteration. I made yet another trek to Bond Street on 12 March, complaining only a little.

Eventually, the skirt fitted beautifully. But as soon as I sat down it creased hideously. It looked disgusting. I was told this was a problem with the material and, astonishingly, that I shouldn’t sit when I was wearing it. As for the jacket … It was altered. And collected. And returned. ‘I can’t believe this,’ I wailed in a letter to the manageress. ‘It has been altered and made far tighter than ever we agreed. It is now difficult even to move my arms.’ Michelle was indignant. She implied that the fault was mine and suggested I see her to sort out the problem.

As I stood in my strait-jacket, Michelle told me the fit was perfect. My movement was still restricted. I insisted it be altered again. When finished, it pinched under the arms, pulled across the back and was uncomfortable to wear unless unbuttoned. For the price, plus the alterations, I wanted a suit I could wear. Or a refund. ‘Since you were quite happy with the jacket in January,’ Michelle wrote in May, ‘I suggest we put it back as it was originally.’ Unbelievable! I was furious. Now, perhaps I made a mistake in requesting the work done. However, if sales staff are only too keen to suggest that with slight alteration a garment will be perfect, should they not also point out when alterations are unwise?

I am not the only one to have a sad story from the sales. Sandra Yarwood is an economics graduate and producer of Beg, a film snapped up for the Edinburgh film festival and showing soon in a cinema near you. But when she chose a Cerruti sale mix ‘n’ match jacket and long skirt reduced to £438, she lost her financial sense. Like many before her, her judgment left with the thought of a sale bargain.

‘The jacket fitted but the skirt was a size too small,’ says Sandra. ‘It was too tight, particularly around the hips.’ They didn’t have her size, but the assistant said it could be let out and the tailor agreed. So she paid for the suit, and £20 for alterations.

ON THE day it was meant to be ready, it wasn’t. ‘I was furious, but they delivered it free of charge a few days later.’ She tried it on. ‘It looked revolting. It was badly puckered at the seams. Typical woman, I blamed myself and thought, ‘I shouldn’t have bought it’.’

Cerruti had said it didn’t take responsibility for alterations. She decided to forget the matter. Then she thought: ‘It’s from Cerruti, not Boutique El Cheapo. I’ve never spent so much on a suit.’ Back to Bond Street. There the assistant agreed the skirt was ‘all wrong’ and returned it to the tailor. A few days later, Sandra collected it eagerly. All the tailor had done was iron it.

Cerruti sent it to another tailor. A month after she’d paid for it, Sandra collected it again. ‘They’d let it out at the hips. But it’s so narrow at the bottom that I could hardly walk in it,’ she says glumly. ‘It’s just not my size.’

The first time she wore it, it ripped badly. ‘Now I can just about move in it but it’s still highly uncomfortable.’ Surely the vendor should have pointed out these pitfalls before doing the work?

‘I felt it was my decision, and that it was an expensive lesson,’ she replies, ruefully. ‘But I won’t ever again buy anything that needs altering.’