WINDOW CHARM

Ms. Andrews is a very good designer. She has a great ability to imagine beautiful draperies. When we met to discuss our draperies and up to placing the order, I thought she was very nice and was very excited to work with her. Our positive experience ended with envisioning the draperies. I was disappointed when Ms. Andrews convinced me that the color I wanted for our bedroom drapes did not exist so I accepted another color and placed the order. I have since learned the exact color I wanted does exist and am truly disappointed that I did not research other companies before making a final decision. Window Charm is a small husband and wife company. We ordered the drapes on 6/5/12. We were told they would be ready to be installed the end of August. They were ready earlier. Ms. Andrews e-mailed 7/18 to schedule installation. I informed her it would need to be after 8/10 as we were headed out of the country on vacation and everything before we left was booked out. She replied that we would have to have the installation prior to then because her fabrication house only gave her ten days to pay them. As we did not wish to make things difficult for Ms. Andrews, we acquiesced and allowed them to do the installation on the day we were leaving the country; a day no one wants strangers working in their home, but we felt pressured by Window Charm to do so. The day of the installation, August 1, Ms. Andrews and her husband were supposed to arrive between 9 and 10:00 am as stated in an e-mail from Ms. Andrews. The morning of the 1st, we received an e-mail at 8:18 am stating they would not arrive until 10:45. Their actual arrival was after 11:00 am. Aside from the inconvenience of going out of our way to accommodate them, arriving late was not only discourteous, but showed a lack of respect for our busy schedule. Being late also put us in the uncomfortable position of forcing us to have to leave them in our home alone to complete the installation after we left. Before we left, as the drapes were being installed, we noticed they were very creased and wrinkly. Ms. Andrews attempted to get some of the creases and wrinkles out with a small hand steamer, which did nothing. At a later point, when speaking about the wrinkles and unintended creases in the drapes, Mr. Andrews stated ?that is a $300 steamer she is using. No one else is going to be able to do any better job than she is doing.? After paying $20,000 for draperies, we felt that at the very least, Window Charm should install them looking freshly ironed and laying properly. They did not. When the draperies were installed, we noticed the seams on many of them were puckered. The fabrication of the drapes was very inconsistent. Some seams puckered very badly, some less, some were clean seams. The valance(s) we ordered for our two corner windows had a seam connecting two colors all the way across the approx. 12? of width. The puckers were so bad where the two colors met that the wrinkles from the p***** extended over an inch away from the seam on each side. When we pointed this out, Ms. Andrews responses were ?I think it is beautiful? and ?This is made to top of the industry standards?. We informed her we were not happy with this piece. We decided could live with others as they were hidden in our bedroom and not in our great room, but this valance needed to have a nice smooth seam. She did not seem to understand our disappointment despite the poor fabrication on the valance being very obvious, even to someone who had never sewn in their life. The valance also creased instead of draped gracefully as I was told it would and as it was drawn out on the invoices given. To this, they stated ?they were not responsible for how fabric laid and that was just how it draped?. We learned this was untrue. If the valance had been sewn properly, the fabric would have draped gracefully instead of folding as it was doing. The sad part of this story is Ms. Donna Andrews and Mr. Brian Andrews insisted the work down was ?top of the industry standard?. We believe they are at the mercy of their fabrication house when they tell them it is ?sewn to top of the industry standard? and has no flaws. We believe because they do not know better, they stand with the fabrication house instead of their client. Communication was very difficult with Ms. Andrews. She is very attached to her work and has a very difficult time accepting when the product she is delivering is not perfect. She does not take critique well. She is a ?my way or the highway? kind of person when you tell her you are not happy with something. Mr. Andrews is slightly better to deal with. We felt no empathy from either of the Andrews as to how we felt about the product, nor did we feel they truly wanted to make us happy despite the repeated phrase ?We just want to have everyone happy at the end of this.? In order to work well with clients and find happy resolutions to problematic situations, you must listen to your client, take responsibility where it is due and fix problems when they occur. They did none of this. Toward the end, we had the valance removed by Window Charm so they could consult with their fabrication house to see if the puckered seam could be fixed. After they had it in Phoenix and had consulted with their fabrication house, they sent us an agreement to sign stating the following: ?We, Erin and Michael McMillen, agree to accept the fabrication option of using the ?Do Fix? (as previously explained to us) application of banding on the Kingston valance in exchange for the standard fabrication application for this type of treatment. This would be done to alleviate our concerns with puckering at the seams where the two fabrics meet. We understand that this is a one-time, at no charge, offer to resolve our concerns. We understand that this cannot be reversed once applied.? As anyone can see, if signed, this would completely give up our rights to having a quality valance done, insinuates that what was presented was ?industry standard?, claims they had explained a way to fix it (they did not as they were insistent on it being ?industry standard?) and all of this while admitting the seam was puckered. It also states it is an irreversible agreement, and could potentially damage the valance even further, but if it did, Window Charm would not be responsible. We sent Ms. Andrews requested agreement to our attorney, who immediately advised us not to sign it and to tell them to fix the valance or refund our money. When we did as our attorney instructed, Ms. Andrews responded with yet another demand to sign the document. At this point, we realized trying to reason with Ms. Andrews was impossible and gave up. We came very close to suing this company. In doing our research, it was obvious we had a very strong case. To us, however, what was most important was 1) simplicity of life, 2) our valance was corrected to an aesthetically pleasing appearance and 3) the wrinkles were taken out of our expensive custom drapery. Following you will read how this was solved by another drapery company that ensures us they can fix the poorly made valance and get the wrinkles out of our draperies. They, and they alone, saved Window Charm from being sued. On the morning after we had resigned ourselves to letting the attorney handle it and letting a judge decide the case, we received a call from one of the companies we were working with who had just inspected and assessed the drapes. They informed us that they had received a call out of the blue from Mr. Brian Andrews at Window Charm. He was apparently calling all the drapery people in the area, looking for the company we had interviewed before Window Charm. When she said she was not the company we had spoken to before them, he then asked ?so you are familiar with the address?? She stated ?yes.? He asked if she was working with us currently, she said ?yes?. He then proceeded to talk about us and attempted to get her to disclose our private conversation to him. She told him ?my conversations with my clients are private and I do not disclose anything to anyone about them.? She then called us immediately and informed us as to what was going on. We have no idea what Mr. Andrews was attempting to do, but the fact he would do this told us he did not have good intentions. We were dumbfounded that someone would go to this extent. This is as unprofessional as it gets. On the plus side, this wonderful aforementioned drapery person could see the situation we were in and offered to fix the valance if we could get it back from them. She only needed to look at photos to know exactly how to fix it. This immediately gave us relief and we offered Window Charm the chance to deliver our valance in exchange for the small $707 we had agreed to hold out until the expensive valance was fixed. The valance was picked up on 9/21/12. Window Charm was paid in full. Window Charm never fixed any of the poorly fabricated drapes installed in our home. They never steamed the drapes to take out the mass of wrinkles in them. We purposely allowed Window Charm to walk away from this deal because we could not tolerate another moment of dealing with them. Removing them from our lives was worth every penny we will have to spend to fix the draperies and bring them up to industry standard. There is more to our story, however, the main points have been mentioned here. It is our strongest recommendation that one be very wary of Window Charm lest you be setting yourself up to receive the same kind of treatment we did with the same kind of disastrous results. Based on our experience, we feel the product offered by Window Charm is not worth the amount charged and because of major quality issues, they are unable to stand behind their work. Buyer beware.