BLUF: Worst experience ever. I only gave it one star because there was no choice for zero stars. Do…read morenot use this company. I am sure there are lots of better places in the area that can do the same or better work than this place. During my period of time dealing with them, I was actually told on the phone by one of the employees "this isn't my problem."
I will start with the passing of my Grandfather in March 2014. He was a veteran and my aunt received the flag that was folded over his casket along with three pieces of brass that were fired during the 21 gun salute at his funeral. I thought it would be nice to have a shadowbox made that would display the flag, some pictures of my Grandfather, the brass, and a few other family mementos. I took all of this to Capital Awards and for the level I wanted, it would cost me $253. I was willing to pay to have a nice tribute to my Grandfather so, that is what I did. I was told on May 7th that everything would be complete in 2 weeks. I was scheduled to PCS on June 25th from Fort Lee, so this fit well within my timeline with some buffer room if there were mistakes. Now the fun begins....
The two weeks went by without any issue and I stopped by to pick the final product up, only to find out it was not ready. This was early in the process so I was not overly upset. They assured it would be ready the next week for me to pick up. It was.....only the background was Army Green instead of Crimson/red and it was single matted (I payed extra for double matting). I was told that the manager took some artistic liberties because she did not have the proper matting in stock. I was as understanding as possible but told them I wanted it redone. Needless to say, it would not be complete before my PCS date. Upset, but unwilling to throw in the towel, I told them to redo it and they offered to mail it to its final destination free of charge. I walked out of the store upset, but not horribly angry.
I PCSed on 25 June as planned and got caught up in my move and did not have time to monitor the progress of the project. Sometime around mid-July, I called the store and got a sob story about how somebody had broken into the store and they had to do an inventory and investigators were there, etc, etc, etc. They had not worked on my project, but would get right on it....or so I was told.
On August 4th, 3 months after the first time I walked into the store, I received a text that the project was complete and that they were getting ready to mail it for me. Yay, I thought, we are finally going to be done with this. I called my Aunt and told her to be expecting a package.....I waited and waited.....I finally called the store only to find out it was never sent but that they were going to take care of it right away. On August 14th, it finally shipped. Again, I waited and waited..........
On September 11, I received a call from the manager that happened to be visiting the main store in Washington for some training. She realized that my package had been destroyed in route to my Aunt's house and the return address was for their main store in Washington, so that is where it went and sat for the better part of a month. She sent it back to her store to repair and send out again.
On October 3, I received another call that they had lost a piece of the brass from the 21 gun salute from my Grandfather's funeral. I had been very patient to this point, but I went off demanding the remainder of my things be returned to me and a full refund. My items were returned on October 8th and I received them within a few days. I was promised a full refund in about the same amount of time.
It is now November 17 and I still have not received a refund. Tomorrow, I will visit JAG to find out what I can do legally and maybe even IG since it is an on-post AAFES affiliated service.
I have been extremely patient but 6+ months on something like this is way too much of my time to spend. BTW, when I finally did receive my stuff in the mail, I had an entire shadowbox completed within a week with better quality for $50 less.
