After meeting with and setting an appointment with our lighting liason, Leslie, for our new construction home, my boyfriend and I returned a week and a day later to pick our lighting and hardware fixtures. When we returned at our scheduled time, Leslie was on the phone discussing personal business with either a friend or close family member (we could hear her conversation about a weekend experience) and had the audacity to keep us waiting for 10 minutes while she finished her conversation. She then walked over to us and apologized for having to ""walk an electrician through an install"". We shook her hand and just sort of smiled at each other about her blatant lie and asked where we needed to start. At that point she asked us what our budget was. We stated we didn't know and asked if the builder hadn't provided it. She said she didn't have it for the lighting or the hardware and went to call the builder. While she was on the phone my boyfriend and I discussed how we were certainly starting off on a bad foot and were upset that she had over a week to have the information ready and didn't. Leslie came back about 15 minutes later and had two identicle figures of $1100 for both the lighting and the hardware. I asked if the lighting budget was including the $300 upgrade we had already added into the price of the home for pendant lights over the bar and she stated she didn't know and began showing us outdoor fixtures. She also didn't have a ""count"" done, so we wandered through the store picking things hoping we hadn't forgotten any rooms. After about an hour we had made our selections and left. A week later I recieved an email stating we had gone over our budget. I asked for the amount of the overage and she provided it as a little under $600 but also said that the count on the hardware had ""come in"" and that we had only spent $821. I asked if we could use the difference in the hardware budget towards the lighting and she did not foresee a problem with that at all and we approved the rest of the overage. As construction drew closer to being completed we noticed the dining fixture was missing pieces and didn't look like the same color that it had in the store. We ordered a new fixture and it was installed. However, Leslie did not check on the chain length for our higher ceiling and it is 2 feet too short and that has had to be ordered and is still not in 3 1/2 weeks later! She also charged us a restocking fee on the old fixture even though it was MISSING PIECES and lied on the return ticket stating ""customer did not like it"". Of course, I didn't like an incomplete fixture in the wrong color! We also have a missing strand of crystals on our mini-pendant lights and again this was ordered almost a month ago and we still do not have it. The final straw happened a week AFTER we closed when she provided our builder with the invoice. She had our budget on hardware incorrect and wanted us to pay the OVERAGE as well as billing us for the new dining fixture, the old dining fixture AND the restocking fee! I have contacted Joyce, the store manager several times and my calls since the first one have never been returned. I am at this point NOT going to pay any additional monies to their company and have made my displeasure with their terrible customer service known to my builder. Luckily, I contacted Elk Lighting directly and was able to have them directly mail me the chain and crystal strand and hopefully they will be installed soon. So disappointing!
more