Resent booming Orange County housing markets have aloud scam artist such as this one, to set up shop, take orders, and like a well organized system, milk unsuspecting customers out of millions! A quick trip one day to the Orange County Recorders Office turned up some amazing and shocking info.
The owner David Blanchley has been in the blind business for a while under names such as "Quick Blinds", "Factory Direct Corporation", and now "Shutter Factory" and "Diamond Coat Technology". And apparently he is no stranger to the Courthouse. Research on the owner shows a continued pattern of lawsuits and unpaid tax problems, each one more than the previous. It's amazing how this has not caught the attention of the local authorities.
This is how the Scam works. You find one of their ads in the local newspaper or Penny Saver for blinds and shutters at a remarkable low price (Factory Direct). A nice sales person comes out to your house to measure up your windows and tells you the whole blind/shutter project can be built by them and you install them how you see fit.
Usually a deposit is asked for up front to get the job started, no Credit Cards accepted. Months and months go by as you wait for your blinds/shutters, and usually your salesperson has quit by this time, so you loose your point of contact offering further confusion. Finally, after nearly 1 year sometimes, someone calls you from a so called installation department where they proceed to set up a date for your installation. What you don't realize is that the so called installation department is yet another front company for this blind manufacturer. Usually acting as some kind of independent contractor, the installation WILL NOT BEGIN until you have PAID IN FULL.
During the installation, which will never go on the day as planned, your installation will always be incomplete. Something will always be missing or broken in which your installer, who's only been there a short while, will collect the cash for the job, and promise to come back, but will eventually never be seen again.
The victims, once suckered into what looks like a great deal, are stuck with a poor quality product, in which they can never correct, or back out of. After the lawsuits start to pile up, the owner David Blanchley, closes all the bank accounts and proceeds to start a new "dummy corporation" and sets up shop to conveniently take all the former customer accounts and this cycle starts all over once again.
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