We made a bad experience with BM Design London and their Director, Binkie Moorhead, resulting in complete loss of trust. We have purchased a dining table from BM Design in November 2019 and paid the full amount in advance, including delivery costs. The delivery of the table was delayed for weeks and we had difficult time communicating with Binkie, who did not answer any of our calls and emails. After several weeks of us complaining about the delay and lack of communication, Binkie finally admitted that her distributor (UK based company) was in liquidation.
Binkie said she will directly contact the table manufacturer, a Belgian supplier, to find out if the table has been already produced, and to ask about the shipment. Then there was a silence again, nobody ever picked up the office phone and it was almost impossible to get hold of Binkie. We urged her several times in writing to either refund our money or to provide the ordered product. It became a very frustrating experience. You can forget BM Design statement on their website that the company is “[…] consistently ensuring an unsurpassed service to all our clients“. Binkie was ignoring her customer, us, knowing she owed us money.
After raising this issue with our lawyer, we finally got Binkie’s attention. She claimed that she could not get hold of the table Belgian manufacturer and that they were very bad in responding. We later found out that this was not true. Meanwhile, we knew the name of the Belgian supplier and got directly in touch with them. They always replied to us within a day of our inquiry and always answered our calls.
They informed us that when they knew the liquidation of the UK distributor early in 2020, they immediately contacted Binkie to ask what she wanted to do with the table. We were told that they faced the same problem with BM Design as we did, Binkie did not reply for several weeks. At the end, they decided to sell the table to someone else. As we found out afterwards, it was known already in January 2020 that the UK distributor went into liquidation. We were fooled until March, and only based on multiple requests for an answer, we were finally told truth by Binkie.
Her proposal to us was to either “refund her profit” (which was less than a third of what we paid) or to order us another table from the same manufacturer, without additional cost to us. The delay was, by now, immense, but we felt comfortable, knowing the table manufacture now, with the proposal and we decided to order another table and wait 3 months for its delivery.
Yet Binkie’s promises, once again, were worth no trust at all. BM Design delayed the start of production for further two weeks by not paying the deposit to the manufacturer on time. When the table was ready for shipping, we were notified by the manufacturer that BM Design did not pay the remaining balance owed to them. There was again no response by BM Design to requests made by either us or the manufacturer. Two weeks later we got a response from Binkie that BM Design does not have the funds to pay the remaining balance of 1300 EUR for the table.
So here we are, August 2020, 9 months after we paid our money to BM Design in November 2019. We are without the table and our money, starting now our legal actions to claim what belongs to us from a company that cannot be trusted.
We decided to post this review to warn others of going through the same experience. As much as we understand that the companies are going through some challenging times, the lack of communication and fair treatment of business partners that we have experienced with BM Design is difficult to digest. You, as other potential customers, have no influence over which supplier, BM Design will select to produce or distribute your ordered products, since as per nature of this business Interior Designers do not disclose their sources. We experienced with BM Design that the customer has no guarantee of product delivery or professional business communication. BM Design kept the full value of our order, including their profit and the shipping cost, to themselves.
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