I would strongly caution anyone from getting involved with Distinctive Designs Inc (http://greensborocabinetrydesign.com/) and dealing with Travis Parrish. We found him to be a poor communicator, extremely difficult to contact when there are issues with a job, poorly attentive to detail, prone to accounting errors when bidding our job, and extremely evasive when discussing costs associated with the job. Throughout the process, we got the distinct impression that he was doing work at the very last minute before our occasional meetings. Despite this fact, he consistently overrepresented the amount of time and effort that he put into the job. This lack of professionalism and lack of transparency ultimately caused us to break ties with him and his company prior to them doing any real work on our project. Unfortunately, we had already given him a substantial deposit for the job in good faith that the deposit would be applied toward the final cost of the work.
Currently, he's holding our entire deposit (well over $10,000) as a "design fee", which is ridiculous. He claims that his design work is worth $100 an hour, while the typical going rate for design work is usually somewhere between $50-$75 an hour in our area, and professional architects typically charge between $75-$100 an hour. For the amount that we put down as a deposit, even at his exorbitant hundred dollar an hour rate, we would be entitled to well over 100 hours of his time (nearly 300 hours at reasonable $50/hr rate), when in fact, I would be surprised if he spent more than 10 hours of design time on the project so far, and likely substantially less than that. At this time, I'm debating between taking him to court with a contract attorney or just taking him to small claims court. Frankly, I have plenty of money, and to me this is not about the money... this is about right and wrong, and we feel very wronged by our relationship with Travis Parrish and Distinctive Designs Inc at this time.
This was a major disappointment to us, and we were very surprised by the entire experience. If you search on Houzz.com and other sites, Distinctive Designs has a rather pristine reputation. Unfortunately, I've learned through personal experience that this reputation is undeserved. Additionally, since getting involved with Travis Parrish for this project, I've spoken to friends and neighbors, and have found two individuals who have had a similar poor experience.
If you're the kind of consumer that wants to hire someone with an extreme attention to detail, excellent communication skills, who is open to discussion so that you can understand the details behind your home improvement project in your beloved home, I would strongly recommend seeking an alternative to Distinctive Designs Inc, as Travis Parrish falls short on all of these qualities.
I'll keep everyone posted about how it goes when we try to discuss a fair refund of a portion of our deposit. It will be interesting to see whether or not he honestly accounts his true time and effort on the project, or if he will continue to try and overrepresent his work in an effort to defraud us of our entire deposit. If he does so, I would consider him an outright crook... read more
