Homelane — interior designing service provider denying full refund

Address:	indis, india, Mumbai City, Maharashtra, 421201
Website:	Www.homelane.com

Complaint against homelane (Interior designing)
I, mr. Haresh pai, and my wife, mrs. Deepti pai, were looking out for good interior designer for doing total interiors
Work of our new flat at lodha amara in thane.

1.) on 9th nov, we (Me & my family) responded to one of the ads by homelane and visited their showroom with the intent of finding if they can meet our expectations interms of interior designing of our new home at thane.

2.) there we were introduced by one of their floor representative to ms. Asmita, as solution executive. She showed us the showroom and various furniture on display and probed about our expectations in details. She kept capturing all those requirements in one of the tools in her laptop and later showed us on monitor, how our home will look post interiors. Mind you, all of this happened in the first meeting itself, without she even knowing the dimensions of my flat or having seen my flat.

3.) later she told us about how we can avail of the huge diwali offers & discounts by paying some amount as token to get enrolled with homelane the same day (Which happened to be the last day of the diwali offer). She further introduced us to mr. Glenn francis (Sales at homelane) to further explain us the offer.

4.) mr. Glenn referred to our requirements, which she had captured on her laptop and told us that, "your tentative quotation would be 11lacs and by availing diwali discounts and offer you can reduce it down to approx 8lacs but for that you will have to pay 10% of the quotation value upfront today. While we were apprehensive and indecisive to pay up in just first meeting but he persuaded us to atleast pay some token money, rs 50000, to book the discount and offer benefits, as that being the last day of the offer. So this itself was a kind of persuaded mis-selling on the part of homelane.in simple words, it is cheating.

Which other co. Will collect 10% of notional quotation value as the means to grant you 20-30% discount over final bill value. (It has to be one of that"ponzy scheme").

And even if one has to consider this 10% initial payment as their means of arriving at deal closure and the basis of entering the contract, then why did they accept that 50k as that 10% initial payment when as per their own communication my initial quotation was 8lacs plus.

Mind you all of this happened on 9th nov itself.

Glenn, persuaded us to pay 50k with this sales gimmick and gave us the receipt of that 50k.

So the very basis of their so called sales contract was illegitimate and incomplete.

Neither anybody explained us any t&c nor we were given any contract paper to sign.

We even didn't receive any communication from homelane to pay the balance 30k of so called 10% initial payment, to keep those benefits intact.

5) the only next communication we received, thereafter, from homelane was an email acknowledging the receiving of rs.50k as an initial amount on 21st nov (2 weeks after our token payment). This email communication also consisted of the hidden terms and condition, which they are smartly using now to swallow my deposited money.

Between dec-2019 to 20-jan-2020, we (Me& my family) had 2 sessions of nearly 2 hrs trying to explain our requirements to homelane designer and designer also happened to visit our flat during one of the sessions, based upon which they shared proposed 3d looking view of our flat. I am purposely calling that as 3d looking view and not any 3d design bcos it had no dimension of the furniture proposed nor of my flat being mentioned in that.
Those kind of 3d view of furniture are ready available on urbanladder, amazon, flipkart etc from which those furniture were supposedly would hv been purchased.
In addition to the above there were other key reasons for us to start looking beyond homelane for the work. Those were;

1) initially it was the limitation interms of design, largely due to constraints related to their fixed laminate sizes which didn't go well with the layout of our rooms.

2) secondly the initial quote for the interiors which didn't justify its full value for money

3) competitors pricing and designs were more lucrative

4) competitors delivery tat was more flexible

5) finally constraint of doing min. Billing of 1.5lacs in woodwork from you,

Were some of the key reasons for us while choosing to opt out of seeking services from homelane.

How cheap of this co. Homelane!!! To be still using the old lala policy in doing business. (* marked t& c to hide unfriendly t&c etc.. That too in an system generated email).

Really how cheap? Such system generated emails and auto-emails are not even opened by people nowadays considering those as spam or unsecured. Likewise we also opened that email recently after they tried to educate us that,"what we had entered into with homelane? Was a contract and its contractual obligations".

Really how professional is homelane?? Isn't it.

They wouldn't disagree to the fact that we still were very considerate to homelane as their customer because inspite every thing we still held our dignity and innocence during our last meeting at their office, in acknowledging the time, their so called designer had devoted during previous meetings, in atleast trying to understand, our expectations versus inadequacies & incompetencies by homelane. Hence we were even prepared, mentally, to let go off 5-6% of our deposited sum with homelane, just as adhoc service charges for their designers efforts alone.

But now we are only more determined to recover the entire deposited sum from them, the right way.

We can see how they seek advantage of running a business in an industry which isn't regulated.

Hence we are prepared to knock the doors of consumer forum and the judicial system to seek full refund and thus justice.