"DESIGN CAFE - THE WORST SERVICE"

There is nothing they can improve about. They have hidden terms and conditions and many people complained they loot money. Especially the Hyderabad team is the worst ever.

"Review of Design Cafe"

Review of Design Cafe

Be extremely cautious when making your initial payment to Design Cafe. Limit the project scope to essentials like kitchen and wardrobes. They have a hidden clause that reduces your discount if you later reduce the project scope, even if it's based on the designer’s advice. The sales team may push for a larger scope to trap you into higher costs.

Key Points to Consider:

Choosing a Designer:
At signup, demand the best designer and visit their previous work sites. Talk to the clients there to gauge the designer's knowledge. Many of their designers lack practical experience and are more focused on sales.

Site Visits and Meeting Minutes:
Ensure the designer visits your site regularly and sends detailed minutes of each meeting. They have been known to manipulate meeting notes to blame delays on customer indecision.

Refund Policy and Management Issues:
If a designer underperforms, as in my case where the designer was fired, they won't refund your money. Despite escalating to top management, I only received a token offer far less than my losses.
The local management is often arrogant, unethical, and unprofessional.

Product Quality:
Their standard products like wardrobes and kitchen setups are good. However, avoid their beds. Dressing tables and bathroom shelves are of decent quality.

Customer Service and Culture:
Their culture is problematic with local teams being extremely arrogant. Postpayment, you are at their mercy, and they rarely address issues proactively.
They lack an exit clause, trapping you into accepting subpar designs and products.

Installation and Deployment:
The installation teams are also arrogant and often do a shoddy job. You may need to chase them to fix issues like door alignment.

Customer Success Team:
This team is ineffective and won’t provide contact information for higherups.

Overall Recommendation:

Design Cafe has good products, but the staff’s lack of knowledge and their arrogant attitude are significant drawbacks. If you can manage these issues, you might proceed. Remember, each Design Cafe centre operates as a franchise, so discuss directly with the franchisee and create separate contracts for custom work.

Should you consider Design Cafe? Maybe, if you’re prepared to handle the challenges mentioned. Always ensure you have all agreements in writing and be ready for a potentially frustrating experience.

"RUN AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY AND SAVE…"

RUN AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY AND SAVE YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY. Horrible designers with zero knowledge or IQ, random charges in the name of policy, zero flexibility in terms of designs, and pathetic communication skills. I dont usually write reviews , but I am compelled to write this one so no one has to suffer what we did. Trust me and run in the opposite direction of design cafe.

"The worst company to sign up for your…"

The worst company to sign up for your home interiors….there sales team make a good pitch and promises a lot of things but once you sign up and are at the money they forget all of it….poor execution team, horrible designers, who have no idea what to do ….there vendors don’t turn up at the site and after making payment all you will do is chase them and it’s a pain getting them to do anything the quality of work and product is horrible for the money they charge…the entire team asssigned to your project is clueless and incompetent to work!!! The top management even after being aware about it turns a blind eye as far as they are making money!! Nightmare getting my house done from them ….do your self a favour and don’t make a mistake to get interiors done from them!!

"Don't go for it....worst experience "

1. How long will they take to get the product installed....and dig into the time they promise....for eg. If they say 2 months ....ask 2 months from when....bcoz they will mislead u by not sharing that after the measurements they will have a 5-7 days time for again checking the design and then they will place the order
2. Most important.... measurements....if u have Denmarked area then ask them how much space the final product will take ...in my experience... design cafe didn't use the space fully instead they have their particular size standard models and they will fit those into ur bigger space by creating fillers around ur Denmarked space and by that making ur storage under utilised ..
3. If u r getting a tour to the mock kitchen or mock living/ dining room ....and if u find something of ur liking make sure they will customise that particular product as per ur storage/ space ....bcoz when I ordered for shelf above the microwave they took the order and fix the product which I saw in the mock kitchen which vary the size I wanted ....and when I asked ...they said ..." Aap ko jo dikhaya thha wahi hai" ( silly response )
4. Make sure u r available when they take measurements....bcoz for me they just did it without even bothering to inform
5. Money will be always asked in advance....so in a way u r stuck with them..
6. Even after the measurements and everything when they will come for installation u may find the pieces are not as per the sizes and u may want them to be resized...

Only positive is installation team....done wonderful job...Mr..Vijay and Vishal very helpful
Finally do not trust them at all...
At all levels they have different people....sales person will rope u in who knows nothing about designs and company standards.... designer will not get involved after first meeting....u will be stuck with some amature contractor who won't be able to advise u

"Go with anyone else, not them!"

Wish there was an option to give 0 stars!
Got my interiors done by DC, Mount Road, Chennai. Spent more than 20L.
There are numerous issues, all from the architect, execution and Project Mgmt side.
Comms: Pathetic. Need to follow up for even the smallest of updates.
Management: They charge you a hefty amount for PROJECT MANAGEMENT. In the end, you need to do all the coordination and management.
Quality: Very poor. Alignment wasn't proper. shaky drawers. detachable shelves had issues, re-order of faulty parts resulted in more faulty parts being delivered. They also said that they do the QC BEFORE THE INSTALLATION. Quite unbelievable considering the real check of quality can be done only after installation.
Escalation: No one responds until you escalate. Even then they don't learn their lessons and WAIT for things to explode again. Their city operations head is the most uncouth and pathetic manager I have seen in any organization.

"Worst service"

Worst service. Do not waste your money and time.
1. delay in every step
2. no transparency
3. customer bring she design
4. non complaint software
5. Delay after delay
6. no handover process
7. No guarantee documents in handover
8. No customer support
9. no proper way of handling the tickets
10. they dont care about the customer
11. dont keep the promises. every time they make some promises in the mail, chat etc., next day in the same mail and in the same chat they ignore...
and many and many..
dont waste money.

"Do not invest in DC "

Do not invest in DC , Total waste!!!
Please do not invest ur hard earned money with DC

They dont keep up their promises.

Right from production of dc products till the hand over date there were lot of neglegence and delay.

The quality of the product and work was even more worst than we thought.

Moreover, within 2 months of hand over all the doors are hanging out from the frame.

We raised a complaint through their customer portal on 10/7/2023 no one turned up till now.

But before 2 days i recieved a mail that the service has been completed.

Worst Management!!!

"DesignCafe.com - a scam story"

There is a scam going on in Home Interiors Industry.

I bought a new house and was due for possession, so we started looking for interior options. Among others, we met DesignCafe. They showed interest in our requirements and offered to deliver within our budget. As we progressed, they offered us a coupon deal to upgrade raw materials at the same cost. To reserve this offer they asked us to pay Rs. 20,000, a non-refundable amount (our biggest mistake). However, after each discussion, their quotation value started changing. This got us worried and so I prepared an Excel file with all the requirements and asked them to fill in the cost. To our surprise, the cost was at least 30% higher than shown in the quotation. This is a big issue with all Interior companies they promise you within your budget, but you will end up paying almost 50% higher.

During this time, I was also moving my home loan to another bank and it took more than expected time. We informed them of this delay and told them to keep things on hold till later in April 2023, as we could not start without getting possession of the property.

This is when the scam started. On 31st March (year-end) they started forcing us to pay 10% of the quotation, or else will forfeit the deal for which we paid Rs. 20,000. They constantly harassed me till 11:30 pm with calls and messages. I decided to call back in the morning. After several calls and emails, we decided not to proceed with them. They were lying about the quotation, behaving unprofessionally and so we lost our trust working with them. Did not want to be stuck later. BTW they take 100% amount before installing anything at your house.

Now they are denying to refund us our money saying this is non-refundable. In the hope of some amicable resolution, I wrote to their management Gita Ramanan (CEO) & Anoop Krishnan (COO) on LinkedIn. After almost a month, no response.

Today I got a call again stating the same - No Refund. When I asked instead of a refund give me something of the same value. To that, they offered me an interesting deal, book a minimum order of Rs. 2,00,000 and they will adjust Rs. 20,000. Aryabhatta must be amazed to see how Zero can make a difference. To get my money back I need to pay 10 times more, must be a joke.

Facts of the case:

1) Amount was for reserving a coupon and not any commitment to start the work.

2) Design Cafe's presented us with false quotations and we chose to cancel the deal.

3) This was based on verbal discussion and no agreement/documentation was signed between us.

I thought to let it go as it was not a big amount, but I was reminded that it is my hard-earned money. I am posting this to make sure no one else falls into these scams. The Internet is full of such complaints and scams and no action is taken against any of them. They are happily defrauding homeowners and making money.

"Worst experience with this team"

Worst experience with this team