I had a terrible experience and cannot recommend Budget Blinds of Berkeley and Richmond…read more
I spent nearly $3,000 on custom shades specifically because I wanted the guidance of an in-home consultant. Instead, I ended up with multiple problems that I believe should have been prevented during the consultation, followed by an installation experience that became defensive and confrontational.
The biggest unresolved issue is the headrail color. I chose Natural Tan fabric, and the paperwork said "Rail Color: DEFAULT." No one explained that the default headrail would be tan, or that white was available instead. All of the window trim in my home is white, and I would have chosen white had that option been explained. I'm not a window-treatment professional. That's exactly why I hired a consultant.
When I raised this on installation day, the salesperson/installer argued that I should have understood it from a blue shade sample I'd been shown with a blue headrail. It wasn't until then that he told me I could have ordered white headrails to match my trim. The owner later offered to remake the shades with white headrails at wholesale cost, which would still have required me to spend more than $2,000 to correct a choice that was never explained to me in the first place.
There was also a major misunderstanding about a front-window shade. I specifically asked whether they could make a shade that was both light filtering and room darkening, operable from the top down. He told me yes, absolutely, and when I mentioned that another company had told me they didn't offer this, he assured me that Budget Blinds did. Someone else present at the consultation came away with the same understanding I did. What arrived was a 100% blackout shade, not light filtering. When I raised this during installation, the salesperson/installer became defensive, argumentative, and confrontational in my home, to the point that someone involved by phone asked him to leave the property.
The owner never addressed my concerns about the installer's behavior. Her position throughout was essentially, "You signed the quote, so the responsibility is yours." That may be her contractual position, but it sidesteps the reason I hired an in-home consultant in the first place, which was to explain important product and design choices I did not know enough to ask about.
There were other issues as well. A door shade did not provide the side-angle privacy I had asked for, one shade arrived with a cracked headrail and had to be replaced, and when the installer later returned for that replacement, he arrived almost three hours before the scheduled appointment without confirmation. The owner did acknowledge that this violated their scheduling policy.
To the owner's credit, the damaged shade was replaced and I received a credit for the returned front shade minus a 25% fee. But overall, the experience was stressful, adversarial, and far below what I expected from a custom in-home service.
The shades themselves are functional and reasonably attractive, but I'm stuck with large tan headrails that don't match my home.
I would not work with this company again.
