LEONE DESIGN

At first she seemed competent and was good at following up with me. I trusted that she would act in my best interests because she had been recommended by a realtor I trust. As it turned out, he did not know her. Things began to unravel with her recommendation of a carpenter to build custom bookcases. I was away when he installed the bookcases but Clare told me that they were "beautiful." When I returned and inspected them, I was appalled at the amateurish workmanship. I wondered how anyone, much less an experienced decorator, could have thought they were "beautiful." Clare sent this carpenter out one Saturday to try and repair the bookcases but they were beyond repair. When we told the carpenter this and that we would not pay him the balance of his bill (we had already paid $2,000 of a $3000 bill), he threatened to rip apart our wall. I told him to leave our house and he screeched out of our driveway at full speed. Clare later told me he had lashed out at her. This is the caliber of person she brought into our home. The bookcases had to be ripped out and we are starting all over again. Clare said she would take responsibility for this fiasco and compensate us $1900 plus the cost of ripping out the bookcases and disposing of them. She reneged on this promise. We should have fired her at this point but decided to give her another chance. That was a mistake. While shopping one day I discovered the bedroom set she had purchased for us through a small store in Bala Cynwyd. It was in a larger store in the suburbs at an everyday price of about 18% lower than the price I paid through the small store. When you hire a decorator, you assume they know the places to shop to get the most for their client's money. She obviously did not. I ended up paying about 18% more than I should have in addition to paying hundreds of dollars in delivery fees I shouldn't have had to pay. Furthermore, this smaller store has a no refund policy, meaning that if anything is wrong with your purchase you are completely at the mercy of the merchant, even if you have paid with a credit card. The dresser of the bedroom set arrived damaged and it was up to us to prove it was damaged before it came to our home. We proved this but prior to delivery of the bedroom set both Clare and the manager of this small store assured me they had inspected it. This was obviously not the case. Clare also selected a kitchen table and chairs for us, again purchased through this small store, which have proved to be very poor quality. She admitted to me all of the mistakes she made but then decided to walk out on the job rather than make it right. Now I have to pursue the issues on the furniture on my own. What should have been a fun process of decorating my home became a nightmare. She also failed to keep me up to date on the hours she was billing so that the number of hours I had budgeted was exceeded.