Fraud is hard to prove. Remove all emotion and look at the facts. If you have fact based proof, then I would report him to the Attorney General's Office.

I paid him a $2500 retainer fee which included his $150/hr fee. He said if we chose the $150/hr instead of the $80/hr he would give us his wholesale designer discount which could be up to 40% stores, including lily and August, restoration Hardware, Ethan Allen etc. we chose the $150 to receive these discount prices. He told us all his furniture was custom made in the USA and all the fabric was made scotchgarded before the fabric was even made. We believed we were getting quality custom made furniture.

A few weeks after we hired him he came to our home and presented a stack of furniture proposals to us. He told me he found a diningroom set similar to the restoration hardware table and chairs for a third of the price because of his wholesalers discount. Showed pictures and prices of dining room, foyer, family room furniture and we picked through the proposals until we decided on about $16,000.00 worth of furniture. All supposidly custom made in the USA and scotchgarded with delivery time estimated between 4-8 weeks depending on the piece of furniture. We gave him a credit card and were thrilled. I also asked him a few days prior to order furniture I picked out at Raymour and Flanigan for my son, he supposidly gets 15% off. I asked him at this meeting if he was going to order it and he said, no order it yourself. Weird, but I was too excited about all the other furniture I didn't stop to say wait a second.

That night I started looking online for the furniture so I could show my family. I typed in the name of a chair and it popped up on Amazon for $105 less than what he was selling it to me and Amazon would ship it in 3 days! I then looked at all of his proposed furniture and every squ code, name, picture and description matched what i was finding online. some was Home Depot, Wayfair and the majority was www.homedecorators.com. All the furniture was available for in home shipping within 3 days, not the 4-8 weeks he was quoting me plus when I calculated the total price of all the furniture he was selling us I was over charged by almost $1,100.00. I tried to stop payment of my credit card and was unable because it was processing. I texted him and said do not order the furniture and that we needed to talk ASAP.

He came to my house the next morning and I presented him with all the facts.

All the furniture can be found online. The first 2 letters of each squ # matched the website name. The rest of the online numbers matched proposal squ numbers. The name of the piece of furniture was the same, descriptions were the same and pictures of the furniture the same. Sometimes prices were the same, but sometimes I was paying more. Overall the shipping on the furniture was in 3 days not the 4-8wks. The reviews of the dining room table (Home Depot) stated it looked like fake wood and it looked plastic. And I was also wondering why he said "no order it yourself" when I have in writing he gets 15% off at Raymour and Flanigan, plus I'm paying him $150/hr to get me discount prices.

He was shocked my all this. He stated he has never heard of homedecorators.com and he would never sell me a piece of furniture that was on Wayfair. He stated that the furniture online was NOT the furniture he was proposing. It was completely different furniture. The stuff I was finding was inferior to his USA custom made scotchgarded furniture. I asked how was I to know where his furniture comes from because all the names, squ #, pictures and descriptions lead me to discount furniture online. He said he was going to do research into my online furniture as well as his to prove they were different.

I called every piece of furniture he proposed that I found online and found out the manufacturer, quality and country of origin. Which to be honest I could care less if a piece of furniture comes from another country or if it comes from Wayfair. As long as its good quality, a descent and fair price and most all I'm not made to believe I'm buying something I'm not.

I spoke with him the next working business day and he said he called Home Decorators and found out all about it. It's mass produced furniture and blah blah blah not the same quality as his proposed furniture. Ok. But this still does not answer where his furniture comes from, if in fact it is different furniture, which he's still holding strong to. I asked again where he gets his furniture and said his vendor out of Manhattan. Other than that he could tell me where one single piece of furniture came from and I have no way of finding out because all my information leads to online websites. I asked to speak to his vendor for them to answer my questions he said ok and I never heard from anyone. Less than 24 hours later I asked for all of my money back including my retainer fee. I understand that he did give us his ideas and time is money so I asked for $1750 back from our $2500, which I think is more than reasonable. He sent a bank check for our furniture reimbursement plus only $1450 of our retainer.

Ultimately I'm left with no furniture because most of what he was proposing was less than acceptable and I paid $1050 for ideas. At the end of the day I got most of my money back, but I'm left with this feeling that he is out there screwing people who don't do their research. I never found out where his furniture came from or if it really was the stuff I found online, which I'm 99.9% sure it is.

I would love to hear people's thoughts on this.
Thanks.

Yes, he sounds shady to me. Yes, he is probably out there doing this to other people. Is this designer listed here on Houzz? If so, write a review on here. Again, you are probably right on with your gut feelings, but proving is soooo much harder. These scam artists know that and that is why they continue.

I'm sorry this happened to you, but I'm not surprised. Cope and paste what you just wrote to a complaint form for the Better Business Bureau of your town against him. They can't really do much, but at least you can warn others.

This comment doesn't apply to anyone imparticular, but I often wonder if scam artists like this can't get away with this sort of thing because the nouveau riche want the social status of hiring others to do the things they should like buying furniture.

Omg I'm having the same problem I have my interior decorator 150 thousand budget for two bedroom three living room small dining room is not enough for shady have found things that she bought but a lot less online thousand dollars less for each piece