Cardinal Custom Furniture owes me $300!

[Tim Simonson]

I paid $300 for a bunk bed that I will never receive. Is there any way that you can help me out by trying to get my money back? I would like to help out future potential customers and steer them away from this company. Cardinal Custom Furniture is located in Saint Cloud, MN.

I have contacted this maker and I know that he has several other projects pending and the customers probably will not get there money or project either.

This company is giving CustomMade a pretty bad name here in MN.

[Seth R]

Hi Tim - I am very sorry to hear about this issue.  Please call me today at 617-300-0169 x102 and I will help you get this resolved!  

[Seth Rosen]

Hi Tim - I just left you a message.  Feel free to give me a shout anytime.

[Tim Simonson]

Thanks for trying to help me out with this Seth. We'll see what happens from here.

[Tim Simonson]

I am hesitant to ever order again now that one of your makers has taken $300 from me. My project isn't complete and my money isn't coming back to me.

I would hope that Custom Made would back their customers. One of the Custom Made makers has stolen $300 from me and all that Custom Made has done so far is to "shut down his site". That doesn't really help me get my money back and in fact will probably insure that I will never get my money back. Now that the company won't be able to have money coming in they will never be able to get me the $300. I have had to file court papers in the county that Cardinal Custom Furniture is located in. Now with the court costs plus the original $300 we are currently over $400 in the hole.

In your blogs you have asked if people were ever hesitant to buy anything from CustomMade.com. I would advise everyone out there to be extremely hesitant. Apparently CustomMade does not check on their makers very well and are only out to make money at the expense of others.

I hope that Custom Made will support the customers who use this service better in the future. I hope that their new policy will work better for any person who takes the risk in using this website in the future. I hope that nobody else gets ripped off using your service. Lastly, I hope that people just use some common sense and physically go to a store or business that is near them and that they know they can trust.

I am not making a generalization. I am making a statement to Custom Made that they need to stand behind both the makers and the customers. I would not buy anything from this site due to Custom Made's poor decisions, not other makers. I realize that there may indeed be many fine, honest, quality makers out there. I hope that you are one of them.

[Seth Rosen]

Tim -

I've consolidated your several posts into this one thread and removed them from the other thread to keep things organized and on topic.  You will note that I did not modify any of your postings.

Unfortunately, you found a maker on our site and transacted with him directly before we launched any of our Trust & Safety features.  You can leave him negative feedback, and he is now locked out of our system.

Today, if you transact with a maker through CustomMade, you can be eligible for our Guarantee.

See here for details;  http://www.custommade.com/consumer-project-board-value

Unfortunately, even if you had transacted using the guarantee above, you still would have to wait for the conclusion of your claim against the Maker.

We are a platform that helps you deal with makers in a safe and trusted environment - you don't pay us directly, unfortunately.  You are still dealing with an independent business owner (the maker).  In the rare instance there is a problem, we are here to help, which is why we charge our makers a fee each time they transact.  That is why it is so important that folks use the platform to get a proposal from a maker, and to accept it.

Again, unfortunately, this wasn't something we had available at the time you transacted - but situations like yours are the reasons why we have developed these protections.

[James]

Very interesting...  Tim if you would have only waited a couple more weeks you would be protected, you didn't, so sorry about your luck. It is pretty disapointing that Custommade has chosen this approach, rather than do the right thing. 

This is a great example of why you should visit your local cabinetmaker, IN PERSON, rather than on-line.

[Seth Rosen]

Very interesting...  Tim if you would have only waited a couple more weeks you would be protected, you didn't, so sorry about your luck. It is pretty disapointing that Custommade has chosen this approach, rather than do the right thing.  

This is a great example of why you should visit your local cabinetmaker, IN PERSON, rather than on-line.

Hi James -  I do understand your comments, but unfortunately, seeing your local cabinetmaker in person does not necessarily mitigate the risk of this type of thing.    In Tim's case, he had a written two-page contract with Cardinal Custom Furniture that very clearly articulated the terms of their arrangement.  They spoke numerous times, and agreed on exactly what was to transpire, when it would be delivered, etc.  It was not reasonably foreseeable by Tim that this person was not intending to do what he said he would do.  Had he gone and visited Cardinal Custom Furniture in person, it would not have prevented this situation.  The guy appeared to be perfectly legitimate, and the terms of the transaction appeared to Tim to be perfectly clear and agreed to.  It's a very unfortunate situation.

But rare situations like this are why we are investing tremendous resources into reviews and reputation management on our website, as well as things like our Trust & Safety Guarantee.  The point of our business is to create transparency and security in this marketplace.

As to your comments about our approach and our "doing the right thing",  I am not sure I understand.   What would you consider "the right thing" to be?  We sold Cardinal Custom Furniture advertising space on our website long before we had any notion of helping to facilitate actual transactions.  Tim found him on our site (the same way he would if Cardinal had advertised in a local newspaper, on a local website, on his own website, or anywhere else).  Tim transacted with Cardinal independently from us.  We did not take any payments on Cardinal's behalf, we were not in any way involved in the transaction or the agreement, and we did not make any money or charge any fees to either party as a result of the transaction.   Aside from helping Tim to try to contact the proprietor of Cardinal, locking him out of our website, and allowing Tim to post a negative review which will be a permanent part of Cardinal's profile, what else would you consider to be our obligation?  I feel like we've handled this unfortunate situation to the best of our ability, given the fact that we neither offered (nor charged for) any of the features we currently offer today on the website when Tim utilized it.  We certainly didn't make Tim an offer of protection that we failed to honor - in fact, we didn't have to get involved at all.

The reality is, these problems are rare but they do happen - we recognize that and we want to fix it.  And we are investing in infrastructure to protect consumers - provided they use our system. We want to protect people like Tim so that more people are willing to buy custom.

[Paul]

Hi Tim,

As a Maker on the board, I am sorry to hear about your difficulty. It gives us all a black eye and harms my considerable investment of time and communication with my clients on CustomMade.com.

As the bad seeds are weeded out and the new process is in place to protect both clients and makers alike I hope you don't paint all makers on CustomMade.com with the same brush and give up hope on the artisan class in the US. As an olive branch for healing I will offer you 300.00 credit of goods and services towards any custom job ordered from me that exceeds 900.00 , in my business that is an easy number to get to.

I hope you don't give up on the board for the ill gains of someone whom we don't want involved in our community anyway.  We are grateful that the cancer has been cut out but apologetic that you had to take the hit.

Good luck in finding a resolution and Viva CustomMade.com

Paul Bierker

Paul Michael Design

[Miks Schmiedicke]

Kudos to Paul for his post, and I would like to second his offer, Tim -- $300 off any project you do with The Strong Oaks Woodshop. There are alot of great craftmen out there, sorry you found a stinker!  Best, Mike

[Tim]

 I would like to thank  Paul Bierker from Paul Michael Design and Mike from The Strong Oaks Woodshop for their generous offers. I will not be able to take them up on their offers however. You can understand why I would be hesitant about ordering anything like this over the internet, at least for a long while. I will take a look at your companies' websites and see what you are making.

 I have learned a few things from my experience with Custom Made. I am certain that there are many fine small businesses out there like these two whom are making wonderful products for their customers. These businesses depend on this website to get them in touch with future customers.  I don't want to tarnish the reputations of any companies from Custom Made, but I also hope that all of the companies, and Custom Made, learn from this as well.

 Please continue to make great products for your customers and don't, in any way, try to take advantage of them. I also hope that Custom Made will continue to do even more to protect the rights of both sides of these transactions.

[Paul Michael]

For sure Tim,  We will continue doing what we can to help people seeking the best custom solutions as well as helping CM.com protect the customer from bad apples. As makers we need the trust of the client and CM.com has acted on our desires adding stronger consumer protections as well as processes that make everyone accountable for their work and requests.

Good luck.

Paul Bierker

[Steve Christensen]

One additional suggestion.  As this type of issue negatively affects all makers on the site I would suggest that we build in an additional safeguard for this type of issue as Paul has suggested.  Since this is a risk in any transaction and we all have a stake in ensuring that these issues are resolved in a satisfactory manor, I would have no problem agreeing to a customer credit process where we as makers and Custommade agree to share a portion of that resolution in providing compensatory options for customer to address this problem.  An alternative option for the customer can only be a postive and is beneficial in the long run. 

One thought I had is that we slightly increase the membership fees and establish an escrow account for reimbursements or a credit process for alternative makers to pick up the failed job based on criteria that CustomMade can establish.

[Seth Rosen]

One additional suggestion.  As this type of issue negatively affects all makers on the site I would suggest that we build in an additional safeguard for this type of issue as Paul has suggested.  Since this is a risk in any transaction and we all have a stake in ensuring that these issues are resolved in a satisfactory manor, I would have no problem agreeing to a customer credit process where we as makers and Custommade agree to share a portion of that resolution in providing compensatory options for customer to address this problem.  An alternative option for the customer can only be a postive and is beneficial in the long run. 

One thought I had is that we slightly increase the membership fees and establish an escrow account for reimbursements or a credit process for alternative makers to pick up the failed job based on criteria that CustomMade can establish.

Steve - I couldn't agree with you more, and I really appreciate this comment.  If we are to build a true market for custom, and if we are going to convince consumers that buying custom really *is* a viable alternative to buying upmarket goods in a retail environment, we need to make sure they feel safe and they have recourse and leverage when a maker doesn't deliver.  And while this type of instance is rare, it does happen and it needs to be dealt with in a way that has the consumer leaving happy.

In this case, I sent Tim a check for $75 even though we didn't cover the transaction, and I helped him track down Chanse, but at the end of the day, I didn't have any leverage over the Maker and neither did Tim.  That's a problem. 

Escrow could certainly work, but there are some issues with it.

I'd love to engage in a discussion about this.  I'll move it over to the "Maker" side discussion boards so we can continue it there....

[Steve Christensen]

One additional thing while I am thinking about it.  You could benefit greatly if you establish a formal advisory board with makers and possibly willing retail customers for the company and set it up as you would a publicly traded company with periodic elections.  I think it's extremely valuable to get feedback at those levels and can provide some great insight for you.