I hired an interior designer to help me design and remodel my highrise condo. I wanted to remodel the bathroom, kitchen, and do some home furnishings for the living room. This is a designer I worked with in the past and she did a fine job on some superficial styling when she was a junior designer. I told her I had trouble with previous interior designers who had inefficient billing practices and I'm hiring her to stay in the budget of $100,000 for the whole project, including the kitchen remodel. That was the most important thing to me. I trusted her to come up with a good design, furnishings, and layout. She said she thought we could get there, maybe a little over.

The other reason I hired her is the designer told me she worked in my high-rise building before and had worked my exact same layout. She said she KNEW that the kitchen could be opened up by knocking down walls and moving doors, "because she had seen it done." I told her I was very worried because I had not seen such a unit in my building. She told me not to worry, it was NO BIG DEAL and she had friends at the permit office and clients get worried but some plumbing and walls movement but it's very minor. She started to create designs for an open kitchen layout and select furnishings for such a layout. I asked her to stop and consult with an engineer or contractor before selecting the icing on a cake as wasn't sure we could build the cake. She had not looked at my CCRs or talked to an engineer before she started on the open designs. She didn't get specs for the highrise building or look at the blueprints to determine feasibility. She assured me she had talked to an engineer and it was fine, and charged more time for those meetings but I never saw any documentation from an engineer, nor did I get a quote. ( Much later I then spoke with my own contractor and he said no way you can move walls that house all the plumbing for a highrise stack and the walls she wanted to move were structural).

When I saw the first bill for the items she was proposing for the remodel, the cost was 150% of the total budget. Some items were so crazy expensive like a $13,000 couch and a $5k chair - when I told they were too expensive, she charged me more money to find less expensive items, to the tune of $225/hr. She would literally charge $500 to find less expensive chairs. I was afraid to give her feedback and she never really consulted me before she charged me for time. When I was shocked to see just the fixtures and furnishings to be so over budget (this didn't even include her design time or execution costs). I had a heart attack and felt sick when I saw the price of her proposal for furnishings. I asked her to send me the invoice for her design time for the work to date, which was 1 month, she charges m $15,000 in just design time!!!! There was also a bunch of "block billing" where you pile together tasks and call it 4 hours x 225.hr - this is known to be a billing method to hide inefficiencies and doesn't stand up to fair billing practices.

At that point, I told her to hold on the kitchen design, and since I already owed her so much money, I asked her to just order some of the more reasonably priced furniture (which she already charged me thousands of dollars of time looking at on Pinterest) and my plan was to get some furnishing done (because of COVID, it was hard to visit showrooms).

She said she charges a mark up 30% for the furniture she purchased on my behalf when purchased wholesale, but when I asked for the original invoices for the items purchased, she refused to give them to me, saying she had to safeguard her vendor contacts. In addition, I was charged for shipping and tax as a lump sum, not for each item.

At that point, I terminated our contract and said the trajectory was too expensive and asked her to repay me the balance due on my account. Then, I accidentally saw an original invoice on a rug that I picked up which she purchased for me--- She paid $360 including shipping, and charged me $895!!!

When I brought this to her attention and told her this is why I want to see the original invoice because she charged me 300% instead of 30% and that she needs to pay me the balance due on my account immediately (it had been several weeks since I terminated), she became engaged and started attacking my character, telling me what a nightmare client I am and that she would be taking more money out against the balance due to me for every email we had about this issues and about getting the furniture I had already paid for in full. After I terminated the contract she continued to take out money against my balance.

She asked the receiving warehouse to not deliver the furniture I paid for completely and made me figure out how to pick it up from Justos warehouse in San Jose ( I live in SF). I told her I didn't want this to escalate into a legal dispute and that's the direction she is forcing me to go, which she took as a threat and further insulted and degraded me and told me how she has family who will defend her from destructive people like me. She tried to deflect the character flaws for her fraudulent and unethical behavior to me by pressing the nuclear button on me and telling me that I'm trying to get designs for free and that I'm the problem when I pay her immediately for invoices.

When I finally got the nightstands that she purchased into my home from the warehouse, they were way too big. She had already charged for precise CADD measuring time and "elevations' and so much time billing time looking for furniture THAT TURNED OUT TO NOT FIT!!! Sloppy sloppy work. The nightstands were $1000 each and made of cheap pine. They had to be picked up and taken back to the warehouse - I was surprised that she admitted that she screwed up the measurements. She refused to refund me the money and insisted that I get another set of nightstands with her that she was going to take out of the balance due to me- at $800 each, I didn't even approve that purchase but she had my money and started taking more and more out from the balance due.

Some of the other items she purchased for me are damaged and I can't take them home and TOLD me to work with the warehouse, Justos, to get it exchanged, and she won't issue me a refund even though that furniture is too heavy for my condo. She also won't give me the vendor information because she said she doesn't trust me.

She accuses me of harassing her if I contact her about all these failures and my inability to get the furniture I paid for. I still don't have my balance check - turns out she sent it to the wrong address and "has to wait for the money to go back to her account" according to her office manager.

I wish I hired a certified interior designer who has strong ethics. California apparently has a registered board of interior designers. https://ccidc.org/ - they have a strong consumer section which says never pay a designer to pay a contractor or subcontractor. Make sure you get original invoices! Make sure they follow a code of ethics.

There needs to be more oversight of this industry. Always have an attorney look over a contract with a designer! I'm reviewing my case with my attorney if it's worth suing her in 'limited jurisdiction court ($25,000 limit).

I had to take the last designer I worked with a small claims court to reclaim the balance on my account because he didn't have it. Turns out he had lots of legal trouble after me. I wish this industry had better regulations. So much fraud and abuse in my experience. Now I'm going to be paying a lawyer $300/hr because of the principal of the matter. I wish I could give everyone the name of this designer who was so unethical and treated me so poorly. I would like to see better consumer protection in this industry. This woman acted as a contractor and architect and merchant without proper oversight and it's not okay. This is a story of caution for all of you working with a designer for your home remodel. Do your homework and consult the consumer protection page: https://ccidc.org/ Hope you will learn from my misfortune.