I learned long ago to complain To The Top. I always typewrite a complaint letter on nice old-fashioned bond paper to the CEO/President of a company, no email, & have never failed to get amazing results. I relearned that lesson a few years ago,, when I was trying to get back some insurance premiums from Blue Cross. After dealing with myriad Customer Service Reps over several months, with promises but no refund, I found the woman's name who was then its President, typed the letter, within 2 days her assistant telephoned me & said she would immediately get on it, & by the end of that week, I had an $800 plus check from them in the mail. I've also received a beautiful plant from the president of a mutual fund company with great apologies & a "fix" & a big box of expensive chocolates & a $30. gift certificate from a retail company President. Oh, yes, 10 free rolls of very a expensive wallpaper from the President of another company when I complained to him that the first batch didn't line up properly. Nobody's impressed with email any more...

Carol, there are two other options with that bathroom outlet, and I've had both of them. :-) One is that the GFI is down at the electrical panel, not at the outlet (which is admittedly not that convenient, since if it trips you have to go to the panel rather than just pressing a button right there), and the other is that that is a secondary outlet downstream from a GFI. When we moved in our electrician (master electrician) could have very easily screwed me over because I ignorantly thought every outlet in the bathroom and kitchen had to be a GFI outlet as in that big square outlet with the buttons. Our current secondary bath has two outlets and only one of them is a GFI outlet, but the other one is connected to the GFI and thus did not need to be replaced. The kitchen has two "groups" of outlets and only the first one of each circuit is a GFI. He could have obediently replaced every one of those outlets without saying a word and at $20+ each it would have added up to a nice little bit of cash for him. So that is what I would initially assume, but it would certainly be something I would check on when touring the house. I do admit that it is awkwardly located and it would "stick out" less if the dark receptacle were changed out for a white one. chisue, I'm puzzled about your comment "the sink is plumbed for a vanity, not a pedestal" - every pedestal sink I've ever seen has been plumbed like that. I just checked my powder room, which has never had a vanity, and glanced at the installation instructions for a couple of American Standard pedestal sinks, and they look the same. The full bath (blue and white) looks to have a tub on the right side of the picture. T2B - I would NOT show the son's room pic. The bright red carpet - yikes! (Not for the sale thing but have you considered reframing that baby picture so that it doesn't just sort of float eerily in midwall? Even a narrow black or silver poster frame would do wonders for defining its perimeter.) Re: full bath pic, the yellow towel seems kind of odd, do you have a blue or blue-and-white one? A towel bar isn't really something you need to draw the eye toward with a contrasting color. :-) I would also crop the picture so it didn't show the border at the top of the wall, as borders are major turnoffs to a lot of people. A picture or something over the master bath toilet would be appealing. Also take those gold accessories off the master bath sink. They don't go with anything else in the view and they point up the lack of surface area, which some women find annoying because they can't spread their makeup and hair stuff all over the place. ;-) I can understand if that's the only feasible view of the bathroom, baths can be a beyatch to photograph if they're not enormous. I really like the front door picture but I'll bet those nekkid bushes have leafed in at least some by now? As they are they kind of suggest that either they're dead (neglected landscaping) or that the house has been sitting on the market since early spring. BTW, your realtor still has not changed any of the photographs as you say you requested on Sunday. Did anyone else notice that some of the virtual tour photos are tilted to the right? It was a little disconcerting. It's most exaggerated in the LR photo but I noticed it in the DR and the first kitchen pics too. My pictures tend to tilt over to one side too, so I'm going to try to borrow a tripod from someone for picture-taking. (My realtor and I are both going to take pictures, then we'll pick the best ones out of both sets.)

That's what I was trying to tell you earlier, that Homefix jacks up the price of the window in order to fool consumers into thinking it's better than it really is. They actually train their salespeople to use this tactic. This has been an issue within the industry for a while. The other big lie is that new windows will save you 40% on utility bills. Fortunately, some Staes Attorney Generals are starting to go after these kinds of companies. You are correct that there are many large companies that use these tactics. The reason that they do is because it works. They are not going to change until consumers start letting these companies know that these tactics are unacceptable and let them know by refusing to do business with them under any circumstances. This is why companies like mine, WoW and Homesealed use forums like this to get the word out to consumers that this goes on, but not all companies operate this way. Some of us actually care about our customers and try to provide a quality product at a fair price. The old saying that an educated consumer is our best customer applies.

I'm not convinced Houzz is even really trying to get lots of traffic to sell banner ads exactly. I think they want to make money by recommending/promoting people's businesses in the wildly overpriced kitchen renovation space. If they can make kitchen contractors and realtors and such to think it is useful or necessary to get involved in Houzz, they can find ways to make money off this. They bought Garden Web to bring in warm bodies in the hopes some would be interested in kitchen renovations. They really have no interest in the forums or gardening...and make decisions without regards to their utility to gardeners. They actually *WANT* gardeners to get lost...they may find their way to more profitable forums. As far as the website design geeks...EVERY time you change the format of a site you lose people. People have to relearn the site...and some won't have the time right now to bother. That's not on the user, that's on the designer. You always have to way the value of the features you add against the vale of the user's time.