Complaints

The complaint text that is displayed might not represent all complaints filed with BBB. Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business.

• Initial Complaint

  Date:01/11/2023

  Type:Product Issues
  Status:

  ResolvedMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  On **** I entered into a verbal agreement to have Mez Works of **************** build a cabinet for a bathroom. At that time the owner stated that the lead time would be ~6 weeks. After defining the details, on 8-8-22 a down payment of 1140$ was sent. I then found out that the business was several weeks late. The owner communicated (email: Aug 18): we were about 12 weeks out from the date the order was placed) The due date was then Nov 8. At the end of Oct, trying to coordinate the pick up, I was informed about further delays. (emails from the business to all customers included) Since my business was impacted, I notified I had to receive the piece before Christmas. I received a very unsympatetic response accusing me that I was not understanding their problems and that there was nothing that they could do for me. On *****, the owner ***** wrote: "And if you prefer to cancel instead, I can provide a full refund on your order". Later on she restated in another email in bright red letters: And if you prefer to cancel instead, I can provide a full refund on your order. Since the piece did not arrive for Christmas, I requested a refund ( note: the work had not started yet as communicated by them) On 1-7, I received a partial refund of 970$. They had applied a cancellation fee. Mez breached the contract and failed to deliver within reasonable dates. They lied, first offering a FULL refund, and then refusing to do so. I have lost revenue (months of rent). After my request for reimbursement, I got several aggressive emails from the owner, verbally attacking me and threatening if I was to write a review (from the owner: You are obviously a manipulative, entitled person and I dont need to waste anymore time explaining anything to you ). Mez admitted having delays of **** weeks ( see email). Mez Works must be held accountable for the defamation and failure to honor their commitment. I am hereby requesting full refund of my deposit.

  Business Response

  Date: 01/16/2023

  1. The customer stated in her complaint that we gave her a lead time of 6 weeks, which is a complete lie on her part to fit her narrative. We have never, ever had a 6 week lead time since first expanding our business in 2012, and we never told her our lead times were as soon as 6 weeks. Not only does our website 'custom order process page' state that our lead times are typically a start date of ***** weeks from the date the order is placed, but I also communicated our availability in one of our very first email correspondences on May 10th 2022, and verbally communicated our lead time information and policies regarding requiring a deposit to reserve a spot on our schedule in a phone conversation with this client on May 27th 2022 while she was at my mother's house inspecting a built-in vanity as an example of our work. In that same phone conversation as well as in several emails (casual check-in reminders to send me the info I needed to start her order process), I encouraged her to iron out her project details and relay them to me so that I could send her a formal quote and subsequently send her an invoice to place the deposit so that we could reserve a spot in our schedule for her project, which she did not provide to me until June 24th nearly a month after I explained our order placement policies. After finally receiving at least some of the project details from her, I was then able to send a project outline on June 27th and awaited her approval on the quote in addition to requesting that she let me know how she prefers to pay the deposit, in which she did not respond until July 8th. I also sent a separate email between those emails on July 28th before she placed her order explaining that our lead times could potentially be 4-6 weeks longer than our standard lead times due to production delays from being recently understaffed. I promptly sent her the deposit invoice on July 13th after receiving the "ok" from the client that she intended to place the order, and in the notes section of the deposit it states "Before purchasing, we encourage you to visit our policies page to review general information about our shop and guidelines in which we operate: **************************************************" and "Orders/payment(s) placed acknowledge agreement to our company policies, terms and conditions." We did not receive her deposit check until August 8th - nearly a month after I sent the invoice. Once we received her deposit, we were then able to add her in our schedule which would have been an estimated start date of anywhere from approximately November 1st through early-mid December. Our products typically take several weeks to build, and in this case about 3 weeks for her vanity project. With the Thanksgiving holiday, this would have put us with a rough completion date toward the end of November or the middle-to-end of December depending on the date we would be able to start, which we are able to narrow down as we move through our queue and get closer to a project start timeframe. Being that we are a small custom order business, we do not provide exact completion dates (also explained thoroughly in our custom order process and policies pages), as build times can vary as well as other things that affect our schedule, which we explain clearly to all of our clients prior to an order being officially placed. This is a case of the client completely disregarding my communication and carelessly lagging on placing and order assuming she was somehow exempt from our order policies while she shopped around but couldn't find another builder to take on her project, and the customer's account of the situation is in no way accurate. This is all supported and can be proved by our lengthy chain of emails, our custom order process page on our website, as well as our policies and terms and conditions (which have been unchanged since the beginning of the pandemic). She has somehow displaced her anger onto us for her own actions of waiting so long to place her order, and in reality she should really be angry at herself for not taking the time to acknowledge our order reservation requirements, or read my emails or our order process and policies thoroughly and for deliberately waiting months to place her order. This is an entitled person who tried to bully us into changing our lead times and policies to accommodate her demands and make her a priority over other clients, when she should not have placed an order in the first place if she didn't like our lead times or want to place an order on time to fit her timeline needs.
  
  2.  Upon finally receiving her deposit check on August 8th a month after I sent the deposit invoice and 3 months after our initial correspondences, we sent her a receipt and immediately reserved a spot in our schedule for her project to be started around the holidays which was in-line with her deposit date order placement and abided by our order policies. We received an email from her 10 days later on August 18th expecting that we should have her vanity completed soon, which was a complete surprise to us. I explained the entire situation to her that she had not given us the deposit until only a week ago and reminded her about our order placement requirements, and re-stated that we had scheduled her project in order of the date the deposit was placed on, and that we would get in touch with her closer to the holidays to finalize the details before starting the build ("We are shooting to be finished around the holidays but will let you know when I have a better idea of our schedule"). I communicated this clearly to her, and have the emails to back it up. The customers we were servicing at that time in our August schedule had secured their orders back in April/May by placing a deposit with us (which this client did not), and why should this particular customer be exempt to our order requirements just because she was too careless to place the order on time to line up with her timeframe needs?
  
  3. In emails dated September 23rd, as well as follow *** on October 3rd and November 23rd, I further updated our employee status and schedule notifying/reminding her that we had recently become understaffed, and that orders would potentially be delayed - but not guaranteed to be delayed depending on whether we were able to hire a new employee - and that if any customer had any issues or concerns to reach out to me to address the situation individually. I heard nothing from this client in response to any of those series of emails. 
  
  4.  We received an email from the client on October 12th requesting that we have her vanity finished and ready for her to pick up on November 12th, in which I replied that we could not, and re-explained that she had not placed her order on time to line up with that expectation. She then sent me a rude email, in which the underlying message was that she felt that she was exempt from our custom order policies and that she should be treated as a priority above our other customers despite that she did not place her order until months after her initial inquiries. She would not, in this email or any others, take responsibility for not placing an order until months after our original correspondences. Out of the ***** or so clients we had in our schedule at that time, she was the only client who did not respond to my emails, and the other clients were very understanding of our policies and our temporary issue of being understaffed. I must also emphasize that this client reacted and behaved childishly to consequences that she caused to herself by ignoring emails and neglecting to read our company policies and then blowing up at me. From the first communications, I should have sensed that she was going to be a difficult client (as I'm sure other businesses have experienced with her), but we do not refuse business based on initial rudeness or lack of communication from a client - we treat our clients equally and with respect. Even after that email exchange continuing to explain our lead times, the client decided to remain in our schedule. 
  
  5.  In an attempt to resolve the situation and avoid having to deal with her any longer, on October 13th we offered to cancel her order at that time so that we could remove her from our schedule. She declined cancellation and decided to stay in our schedule despite the fact that I explained that we would not be starting the project until the holidays, as originally communicated. She declined the cancellation of her order. 
  
  6.  On December 16th we sent her an email titled "FINALIZING PROJECT DETAILS" so that we could start her build, and we heard nothing from her until December 23rd telling us to cancel her order. Our policies clearly state "Cancelling within 4 weeks of your projects start date will incur a 20% cancellation fee associated with the full item amount. A $25 processing fee will also be subtracted from the total amount refunded, and any additional non-refundable processing fees or material costs already purchased may be withheld if applicable." As a courtesy, we only withheld 15% of the deposit amount instead of 20% of the full item amount as well as waived our processing fee.
  
  7.  I have never, ever threatened any client and did not in any way try to intimidate this client. I merely explained to her that I was sticking to our policies and was not going to be afraid of whatever actions or course she was going to take against me/us, and I was reacting to the way she was aggressively treating me. She has been rude and entitled since we first started communicating, which I largely overlooked/ignored until she started being more outwardly hostile and demanding toward me, and in my responses to her I was merely defending myself as well as providing proof along the way that she had been completely ignoring my communications to her and that she put herself in this circumstance all on her own. Contrary to her statement, this client actually threatened me by stating "correct the amount, or actions will follow" - and I responded by saying "I assume we'll be getting a scathing review from you, which I will gladly reply to and stick up for my business." And I stand by any statements that I made about her character (refer to her statement, and you can clearly infer as to what kind of person she is). I have never, ever had to speak to a client like this, but I am allowed to stick up for myself and my company policies, and WE WILL NOT BE BULLIED BY A PERSON LIKE THIS. She's taking this ridiculously far because she refuses to take responsibility for her carelessness and horrible way she has treated me and my company.
  
  Here is a link to our custom order process page which clearly states our lead times:  **************************************************************
  
  Here is a link to our policies, terms and conditions which states our order placement requirements, and cancellation policy:  **************************************************
   
  We are done with this situation and would just like to move on with our lives, and we hope to never encounter a client like this again! My one regret is ignoring my intuition when she first started to show signs of entitlement prior to placing an order, and I should have never accepted an order from this person in the first place. She continues to harass us and waste our time with this horrible BBB complaint that is in no way reflective of the 800+ other projects and clients we've worked with over the past 12 years in business (we have never received a complaint until today), and we will never be able to recover the time lost dealing with this nightmare of a person. I hope that for the sake of others, that she learns to treat people with respect as well as to respect order policies from small businesses and all businesses alike. If any client or potential client of ours reads this complaint and is concerned in any way, I am more than happy to speak with you directly about the entire correspondence (over 50 emails) between myself and this client (and will of course withhold her name for privacy reasons), as I'm sure you will be better able to understand the situation and understand our position and policies as small business owners.

  Customer Answer

  Date: 01/21/2023

  I am rejecting this response because:

  I would like to bring once more clarity to the issue which can be summarized in a few short sentences, eliminating all redundant narratives aiming at hiding the real facts. (Note: As there was no verbal communication between the seller and the buyer, I will quote exactly what was written in emails) 
  Aug 8: The seller received a deposit of $1140 for the vanity. 
  Aug 18: upon my request for an ETA the seller responds: When we initially spoke about timelines I had mentioned that at the time we were about 12 weeks out from the date the order was placed. 
  Aug 8 + 12 weeks = Nov 8 
  Sept 23: The seller states in an email to all customers: We haven't been able to start any projects from our September queue yet .This essentially means we are running about 12 projects behind, equating to about 4 weeks behind schedule.
  Oct 13: The seller states: ..   This equates to being about 6-8 weeks behind schedule and we will be unable to have your vanity completed during the original estimated 12 week completion time frame.   If anything changes, I will surely let you know. And if you prefer to cancel instead, I CAN PROVIDE A FULL REFUND ON YOUR ORDER.
  
  
  Oct  27: The seller states: Please let me know if you would like us to cancel the order and PROVIDE YOU WITH A FULL REFUND
  Dec 16, the seller notifies: We'll be starting your project around January 5th/6th   The delivery  would have been around the end of January, six months after the order, TWICE the time originally quoted. 
  
  It is my right to ask for a full refund for 2 simple reasons: 
  She offered it in WRITING repeatedly
  The order delays were beyond any reasonable expectation and as a consumer I am protected against this. 

  
  While I am sorry she encountered so many issues with her work, the buyer cannot be penalized for not being able to absorb her delays. We all have to run a business and we have to honor the commitments we make. I would have gladly proceeded with her if the times were reasonable. I warned her that I needed the item by Dec at the latest and she said there was nothing she could do. I had no choice.  Even her partner, stated that he completely understood  why I had to cancel ("We're sorry to hear that this project will not proceed, but we completely understand. Best wishes to you, and happy holidays." ) 
  A good seller takes responsibility, committing on a refund and then refusing to do so, is dishonesty. 
  
  Any attempt to make the buyer appear like a bad person is completely inconsequential to this matter. If you plan to reply to this, please stick to the  facts and not ************************ of who I am, what I think, and what I do, which you know none. Your commitment TO ALL CUSTOMERS is written in black and white,  and supersedes any previous arrangement (including contract)  -- nothing else counts. 
  
  

  
  

  Business Response

  Date: 01/23/2023

  We stand by our policies and will not be responding to this incident going forward. The customer is eliminating key communication on our part, lying about several interactions, refusing to acknowledge or respond to emails, and we cannot continue to battle with her nor spend any more time on this. We wish her the best of luck with her project, and we hope that she treats businesses that she works with better going forward and respects their people, practices and policies. We are ending communication from this point on.