DrapeStyle

I ordered thousands of dollars of draperies and roman shades from this company. Initially, I was very impressed with their quality and the fact that they sold samples so you didn’t have to buy the window treatment without being able to see and feel the product! After getting my first order, I became a regular customer, and had them make roman shades and draperies for six rooms in my home.
Then a minor issue came up, and they treated me like garbage.
How one treats their customer after a MINOR issue comes up tells a lot about the company. I had ordered roman shades from them as I had done for many rooms. The last set, however, were made by a different shop that (according to the first owner/​manager) they just started using. The smaller blinds’ cords started fraying, then breaking, and quickly. I emailed the owner/​manager I had placed my orders with, no response. I called her, and she said she had to check with «her partner, Lisa».
I called again (as they simply stopped returning my calls now that there was an issue to be dealt with instead of more money to be made) and Lisa took the call.
Immediately, Lisa plunged into how this was MY fault as I had ordered them with privacy backing. Pardon, but I ordered ALL of the roman shades with THEIR privacy backing, and THEY, DRAPESTYLE, were the ones who OFFERED the privacy backing, and it was they — DRAPESTYLE, who SOLD me the SAMPLES of this very same privacy backing! So if it was going to create a problem — why did they sell it? Also, why was this not happening on all other ELEVEN roman shades I purchased from them, which also had their PRIVACY BACKING?
Lisa says she will look into it, but never called me back.
A week later a man calls my home, leaving a very aggressive message on my voice mail, demanding that I call him back and «deal with» him.
I called the first owner at once, as I had no clue who this scary rude man was. She told me he was Lisa’s husband. I told her how inappropriate that was for him to be calling, that I didn’t know him, and that he was never involved in any of these orders. I also told her that I did not appreciate his aggressive manner and insistence that I «deal with» him about this, and therefore I obviously would not be returning his call.
After a few more phone calls (again they just kept ignoring my calls), the first owner finally gave me the number of a man (at MY expense) who she said could fix the breaking cords. When I called this repair man, not only did he say that he did not know this company, had never worked for them, and he even disparaged them on the phone! He said they were probably one of these ‘fly by night internet sites”, and I that had been scammed with a «cheap internet product». He said he could come by, remove all the blinds, and take them back to his shop and take them apart to see if they could be fixed. Um, no. Not comfortable with him not knowing them, his not knowing their product, and Lord knows what he would do in his shop «taking apart» my very expensive roman shades!
My husband was shocked at the behavior of all the people I had tried dealing with, and so he examined the blinds. He saw that it was simply the cord quality and how many times it has been looped (or in this case — NOT) through the blinds. He examined all of our other blinds, the ones made by the different «shop» the owner said who manufactured them, and he could clearly see the difference in the «good» ones versus the breaking ones.
He said that he himself could fix them. I called the first owner/​manager up and told her that all I needed from her was to be told WHERE to buy the cord. She didn’t want to give me that information, «proprietary» and all, but she said she would order the cord for me.
She also informed me she didn’t know the repair man she gave me, she had simply picked his name off of the internet. How comforting.
There was a huge delay (and a few calls as they never, proactively, call you to let you know the status) in getting the cord, but it finally arrived. My husband took his time to take the blinds down, remove the old thin quality cord, and he ran the new cord throughout the blinds.
They work like a charm.
I am sad that the DRAPESTYLE owners were so rude in dealing with a simple CORD issue. I did not appreciate Lisa trying to blame ME for ordering from THEM, and I really did not like the attempted intimidation tactic of Lisa’s husband calling me and leave me that aggressive message. Unprofessional, and most unnecessary. I was a GREAT customer, and I had great interactions with the first owner on all of the other many orders that I had placed.
However, if this is how they are going to treat a good customer over a minor (and easily fixable) issue, they are obviously not a good company to do business with. To blame the CUSTOMER for their manufacturing issue, to ignore the customer for weeks, and then to attempt to intimidate that customer, THAT is not a good company at all