ANNE RUE INTERIORS INC

We thought hiring a designer would help make the process of decorating our new home faster and simpler. We got just the opposite. It's really unfortunate. We wanted to love Anne Rue. She seemed very talented. The problem was that she came across as very disorganized and unprofessional. She was late to meetings or canceled at the last minute, was impossible to schedule with, took a week or longer to reply to emails. There were multiple instances of errors that pointed to a lack of attention to detail, some of which cost us money. Ultimately, after waiting months for a plan, we received a hastily put together PDF via email (she had to email it because after trying for weeks she simply couldn't find time to meet with us -- of course, she had already been paid in full at this point). We emailed her asking some basic questions about some of the items in the plan. After days of no response I wrote her expressing my dissatisfaction with her communication and that I expected better. And if she couldn't provide better, perhaps we should not work together. Her response was to tell me that I didn't understand how designers work and that she agreed we shouldn't work together. At that point my wife and I simply could not trust her with a $68,000 order (that was the amount of her proposal for furniture in three rooms, which included about $10,000 in delivery charges). After it was nearly impossible to get a few page PDF document, we weren't confident she could execute the plan, or for that matter whether the furniture would ever even show up. Since her contract requires that you purchase everything through her, this basically rendered the plan we had already paid for useless. I gave her the option of either refunding a portion of what we had paid or giving us the details of the furniture and wallpaper and fabrics she had specified. She refused to do either. At this point she's been paid in advance to develop a plan for the entire house and we're left with a plan for only three rooms that's not worth the hard drive space it takes up. Honestly, Anne Rue tries to give the impression that she is ultra-busy and is superior to the client. This may be her idea of sales or maintaining control of a relationship. However, if she wants to conduct business this way, she should at least deliver. I can tell you, if our experience is any indication, Anne is not a professional. More realistically, she is a very disorganized mother posing as a professional interior designer. We were consistently pushed aside as her personal family activities take priority over meeting with paid clients. We also agreed to purchase certain items through her, but then they were never ordered, which caused set backs on top of the meeting and communication issues. It is also important for potential clients to know not to expect to have much input on the plan. She prefers to work on her own rather than with you to make selections. If you try to get involved, her response is, "You don't understand how this works." In the end we found a great furniture store in town that provides complimentary design service for their customers. Their designer actually spent more time with us than Anne ever did and had our new plan ready in a week. His plan was more comprehensive, too. It's a shame that we wasted thousands of dollars on a professional service that never materialized and came out months behind schedule as a result.