Complaint Review: Empire Today - Kent Washington

Having positive experiences with Empire's carpet installation in the past, my wife and I decided to use them for a small custome window treatment for our new how - two sets of vertical blinds for slider windows.  The first sales appointment set for their "free in home estimate" - which according to their website includes measuring - was completely missed.  No phone call, no email...nothing. I had to call them to find out why. They said they had no reps available in the area that day, apologized, and rescheduled for the following week.  

At the second appointment, the rep arrives on time, and after picking out our blinds, and taking measurments, we are quoted a price of nearly triple what we had found elsewhere such as Blinds.com, or DiscountBlinds.com.  Even after being offered "coupons", the price was still more than double the alternatives: $1200 for a set of blinds that would cost at or less $500 elsewhere. For some dumb reason we decided to put down  a deposit anyway - $400.  The sales rep noted that an installer would be out in a few days to take final measurements - no mention of this being a separate cost. 

Three days later, the installer shows up, takes some measurements and leaves, spending all of 20 minutes inside our house.  The following week he calls and says the blinds are ready and we schedule an installation appointment... which again is never met. I call the Empire Today customer service and they say they have no record of the installation or the installer, much less the appoinment.  At this point I tell them I want to cancel the order and requested a refund of my deposit.  I was told that would be okay and they would process the refund.  A week later, not having seen the refund posted to my account, I call Empire's customer service, and they say the refund was processed as a flooring installation, not window treatment, and had to reprocess the refund. --- NO MENTION AT ANY TIME OF THE COST OF MEASUREMENT...

The week after cancelling, I get an call from the installer saying the blinds are ready and to schedule an installation.  I inform him that I have since cancelled the order with Empire. He was never informed of the cancellation. I told him it was this apparent lack of communication and coordination which led me to cancel the order.  At this point, I still have not received my refunded deposit. After talking to the installer, I called Empire to let them know the installer was not aware of the cancellation. They thanked me and said they would follow up.

I waited two more weeks for Empire to "process" my refund...having not received it THREE WEEKS after the fact, I called and requested to speak to a manager.  The customer service manager I spoke with had to put me on hold while they called "their people" to find out what was going on. After a lengthy call, I was finally informed that I would be issued a partial refund of $245. They would be withholding $155 for the cost of the measuring...Why was that not disclosed from the beginning?  I was never told the followup measurment would be charged.  It now feels that they are finding some excuse to make any sort of money off of me.  

I highly recommend that you find any other alternative to Empire.  It has been three weeks since I cancelled and have yet to receive a refund.