Complaint Review: KS Designs - Kelly Shabott - Tampa Florida

I hired KS Designs by Kelly Shabott in November of 2004 to purchase furniture and decorate my new home. At first everything seemed great, but we found to our surprise Kelly Shabott slowly but surely was double invoicing, charging for bogus items, overcharging us for unaccounted shopping hours, credits that never added up... Not to mention her workers destroyed expensive items in our home. She continued to request more and money from us to complete the house. Finally I decided to sit down and figure out how much money was going out to her for her services. Her invoices did not match my check book.

When she was confronted about ripping us off to the tune of $5000+, she broke down in tears claiming "she would never do that", "she's not that kind of person"... We gave her a chance to explain. We had her bring over all the invoice copies that she had to go over it with us. Shabott ended up digging a deeper hole for herself when she produced fudged invoices. Her invoices did not match our copies. Items which we never received or had already paid for in previous invoices were added to her copies. Most of them did not even have our signature on them. It got so confusing that she couldn't even answer why her numbers we're so off.

We told her to leave and come back when she could figure everything out. She contacted us a few days later and said she figured it out and we we're indeed right. She blamed it on "someone" that does her books (yea right lady, you work out of your house.) She claimed the amount that she owes, is not as high as we had calculated, but it was still a few thousand dollars and she will just credit us for the balance of her work. We decided to just accept what she offered due to the fact of unfinished work, damages to our property, not to mention we had also given her $3000 dollars(which she said had to be paid in full at the beginning of November), to have nice blinds installed.

By the way we still do not have this item, the unfinished work is still unfinished, the property damage has never been fixed. Again this was all on items and work that have been paid and overpaid. We actually ended up giving her over $45,000 to complete my home which was never completed.

We allowed Kelly back into our home to finish the work which she had still owed us. Later she decided to call us and let us know that she had made yet another mistake and that we actually owed her money. She refused to explain how she came up with this, not to mention she refused to sit down and go over it with us. When we demanded at least our $3000 back for the undelivered blinds, she said that she would not deliver the item that was paid for in full (in November no less) until we paid her more money.

Out of concern for the type of individual we were dealing with, we had a background investigation done on Kelly Shabott and found three felony convictions, one of which was a burglary charge. This was very alarming to me and my family.

We got ripped off for thousands of dollars, and we are now dealing with a convicted criminal that is threatening us for money and saying if we do not pay, she will not give us the items the were already paid for and in addition to, she would attach a lien to our home for non-payment.

We seeked legal advise and the help of an accountant and found that she actually took us for more money than we thought. Even worse, we can take her to civil court, but unfortunately that would mean even more expense with a strong possibility that we would never see our money or our items. My only goal at this point is to stop Kelly Shabott and KS Designs from ever doing this to another person again!!! PLEASE HELP!!!

Kelly

Apollo Beach, Florida
U.S.A.