I looked into hosting a party at the Phelp's House, and was very excited about it, but ended up having to cancel due to the house manager, Tommie Baldwin, being very rude and not honoring certain things in the contract. When I first reached out about renting the house I specifically asked when the final headcount was needed (rent is based on your number of guests), Tommie told me we pay rent the day of and it's based off RSVPs. Originally, I was planning for around 50, but found my list had grown by the time I took a tour. The day of the tour there was 4 in our group, all of us are planning the party together and so obviously some of the others had questions/comments as we went along. As we were touring it became very obvious that Tommie was very particular about some things, which is fine, but also not very professional. At one point she realized the person that had rented the night before forgot to change a thermostat by three degrees, and said "hmm, I'll have to think about how much of their deposit to keep" right in front of us all! So, there doesn't seem to be a schedule or table she goes by when determining if a deposit should be returned, it seems to be based off her mood at the time. We had inquired about using certain chairs that the contract lists as available to all renters, and we were met with "Why? Why do you want those when there are plenty of these others" in an incredibly rude tone. I asked if parking was allowed at the church next door, she responded with "That is a school, not a church!" with more attitude than was necessary. For the record, the building says "church", so...yep. We went ahead and signed a contract and left a deposit check before leaving after the tour. One of the other people with me asked if we would be given a copy of the signed contract, and her response was "Why would I do that? You have a copy of the blank one, it would be a waste of my time to copy every contract. We then asked if we could take a picture of it, and she said we could of the front and signature pages, so we went ahead and took pictures of the whole thing. That should have been our sign to say never mind, but we were very excited about the space. The very next day I was contacted by Tommie saying she was uncomfortable going forward with the contract unless my answers to her questions were satisfactory. I was confused because our party is nothing out of the ordinary. She was upset our guest list had almost tripled since I had first inquired about the place, even though I had previously addressed that in an email. She was also upset to find out it would be a joint birthday party, why that mattered I'm not sure. The number of people being celebrated shouldn't matter when rent is based off the number of guests. She then accused us of trying to throw a wedding disguised as a birthday party to avoid paying for the wedding packages all because we had asked if we could use the gold chairs and brown chairs mentioned in the contract. I was floored. The contract clearly lists those items as available for use to anyone who rents. According to Tommie those chairs are reserved for weddings only and are not to leave the third floor, but like I said, that's not how the contract reads, so she tried to modify an already signed contract by saying we weren't allowed to use them, even though it would have been our responsibility to return them to where we got them. I informed her she should probably have the wording in the contract changed because there were several inconsistencies. Following the phone call Tommie told me she would hold our check for a week before depositing it in case we decided on a different venue, which is exactly what we did. I emailed her back asking when I could pick the check up, and after a few snarky responses she said she would let me know the next day when she would be available. The next day comes around and the only thing I had received from her was another snarky email. She ignored a follow up from me asking what time I could get the check; she also ignored a phone call and voicemail from me. She waited until 4:40pm to text me saying she'd left the check on the porch and sent a picture of the location. There was no "can you pick up during these times?", no "are you okay with me leaving the check on the porch?"; it was incredibly unprofessional. I tried finding a way to contact someone else from the Carthage Historical Preservation (the group that owns the house), but unfortunately all ways of communication lead back to Tommie. The whole experience was incredibly disappointing. The house itself is amazing and I definitely recommend taking a tour if you're into history and historical houses, but definitely tread lightly with the house manager if you are looking to have an event there, know that she is not a fan of people actually reading the contract and expecting her to honor it, there is no other contact person, and document everything. read more
