Lori Clarke Design

I hired Lori Clarke to decorate my home. My husband and I came up with a budget. Lori looked at the entire house and said she could do it on budget. We then were told she had a $13,000 design fee. Lori informed us that she assumed we knew that wasn't part of our budget. Because Lori gave us so much Hope and excitement on what she was going to do with our home,I convinced my husband to go forward. Then Lori shows up with her daughter and some lady taking measurements. They were there for 35 minutes and they were trying to pull out of me what I liked and disliked no pictures no ideas just random questions. Mind you I was clueless with this house, and I was hoping that there was going to be look books or boards put together with ideas that I would fall in love with. None of that happened. After awkward back-and-forth, they send us one look board that was completely opposite of what we originally talked about. We immediately senses how bad it was going. We asked her if we could just pay her for her time she had already spent with us and let us out of our contract, and recoup some of our money. She made a very clear that we had signed a contract and that she wasn't going to give us a dime. Not wanting to walk away from $13,000 designers fee with NOTHING,we decided to stick it out with her and make it through as best as we could. So after her one design board for the living room went bad. She threw that format out. So back to just random furniture questions,"do you like this?""Do you not like that."Here, I am paying you, thinking that you were going to have a couple look boards/idea boards.No, we literally were just picking out furniture with each other which I could've done all on my own. She has us meet her at a furniture studio that she works under. Has us look around, select things that we like. We go home. We get an email just for the furniture in the living room." She guided us in selecting,We would be out of budget.She knew the prices of things,not us. We hired HER to keep things on budget. Let's just say this was a giant nightmare. We felt completely bait and switched. She would send us items and we would Google image search them and find them for hundreds of dollars cheaper. Also when you purchased items through her, she charged you for holding fees and additionalshipping/handeling fees. If we were to just purchase them on our own, none of that would happen. after Lori realized we weren't going to purchase most of the furniture through her, the entire project became a text/email only transaction. Every email and text was an additional charge to us too. So who knows what that $13,000 went to? That was supposed to be the fee for her working with us? Lori misled us. And I hope this gets to someone before she does it to you. She's not working for her clients best interest she's working for her own. In that business when you take care of people, they'll use you for life. If she didn't like working with a budget our size, she should've said so