Anyone order blinds or shades from Smith & Noble?

[SummerBaby]

If so, what was your experience? I'm moving into a new home in July so I need a house full of blinds/shades. Thanks.

Val
DD 2.5 years old
another summer baby coming in 2007!

[kelly ann]

I ordered a bunch through them and I had mixed results. They got some orders wrong, a couple of items took longer than expected, or I had to have them send me missing hardware. I liked them at first, but eventually went with a local company to finish the remaining windows in the house. The guy I used locally was actually cheaper and DH liked having someone else install the treatments (of course).

As for the quality of the blinds, I didn't think they were any better than you can get through a local installer...I bought wood blinds, fabric verticals, black out cellular shades, and one shutter from Smith and Noble. If you are thinking about shutters, definitely go through somebody local - too much money to rely on yourself to measure and hang up.

If you decide to use Smith and Noble, I believe they are part of ebates. However, I had trouble getting one rebate because Smith and Noble reported that the entire order was returned (even though nothing was returned - all items are non-returnable).

[tny915]

I ordered blackout roman shades for DD's room. We do need more window coverings throughout the house, but Smith and Noble is pricey so we stopped at DD's room.

I was pleased with the quality, the ordering process was painless, and I think shipping was pretty quick. We ended up with the cheapest roman shade they offered. Two windows, one maybe 3 feet wide and the other a 1 1/2 feet wide cost us maybe $700. We hired a handyman to install them.

I ordered honeycomb shades from 3 Day Blinds for our old house. We got 7 windows covered and had a special template drawn for an arch window, got some top-down/bottom-up controls and even had them come out for the measurement and the installation. I think it ran us between $1,500-$2,000 for all of that, though it's been a while so I can't remember exactly. It was cheaper, but it took a few weeks for them to make the shades.

I'd probably go the 3 Day Blinds route for the rest of this house, if we ever get around to it. It was just more economical.

[saleenl]

My experience is with 2" wood blinds, so your mileage may vary but...

About 3 years ago we purchased living room blinds from Smith and Noble. The blinds we got were quite nice and stylish but they didn't blow me away. Plus, I ordered four blinds with a stick to open/close and one of the four came with a cord instead. They quickly shipped a correct blind but it slowed down our installation by a week.

A few months ago we wanted to replace the blinds in the dining room. I searched online and found some newsgroup posts about M&B blinds. One post mentioned that that are a manufacturer that builds blinds for other companies. They are sold at Lowe's under the M&B brand name, so I was able to look at them in person, as well as their color choices. They looked VERY similar to our Smith & Noble blinds, but didn't have as many color choices or fabric tape choices.

Blinds arrived (costing less than HALF as much as Smith & Noble, in my case a $450 difference) and the order ID stickers are the SAME as the S&N ones except they lacked the line customername=sminthnoble. Price was half as much. Smith and Noble has a greater selection of colors and free swatches, but I wanted a more basic style, anyway. In fact, the newer blinds have several nice new features that our older ones didn't. I am thrilled with them. The web site we bought them from is called Blindsaver. They were running a sale when we bought ours, which they seem to do periodically. I was pretty happy with saving over $400! Just be sure to measure carefully!

http://www.blindsaver.com

[hcsl]

I thought their quality was very good, but the customer service was horrible. One of our blinds didn't have several holes drilled that were supposed to be drilled to finish the assembly. I was fine with doing it myself, but when I called CS to let them know there was an error they just didn't seem to care. Given where the holes were (PITA to drill) and the fact that the info explicitly said the holes were predrilled I felt they should have at least offered me something, like shipping refund or 10% off.

[hbridge]

We ordered shades for our bedroom a few years ago and were very disappointed that the edges were not finished very well. I thought they were extremely poor quality for the price. Although we still use those shades, I now throw the catalogs away when they come and we've gone else where for all of our window coverings.

[NancyJ_redo]

I planned on using them last year for several windows and spent a ridiculous amount of time looking at the swatches online, ordering nearly every swatch to see it in person, having a friend help me match and choose, etc.

Once I had my choices finalized I input the order online and at the last second decided to do a quick search to see if there were any coupon codes to use. What I found instead was a ton of bad reviews regarding their quality and customer service. I was SO bummed considering I had spent an inordinate amount of time selecting just the right treatments for several windows. But, the reviews were so bad that I couldn't imagine spending a few thousand dollars on crap and have no recourse. So, I reluctantly started over with my search. I looked at nearly every other manufacturer and source out there and never could find the range of options S&N offered (especially with the tape options for blinds), but I knew I'd kick myself if I ordered from them and then had to spend months trying to rectify their errors, as many others seemingly had done.

So I have no first hand experience with them, but have read many horror stories from others online.

[NancyJ_redo]

I planned on using them last year for several windows and spent a ridiculous amount of time looking at the swatches online, ordering nearly every swatch to see it in person, having a friend help me match and choose, etc.

Once I had my choices finalized I input the order online and at the last second decided to do a quick search to see if there were any coupon codes to use. What I found instead was a ton of bad reviews regarding their quality and customer service. I was SO bummed considering I had spent an inordinate amount of time selecting just the right treatments for several windows. But, the reviews were so bad that I couldn't imagine spending a few thousand dollars on crap and have no recourse. So, I reluctantly started over with my search. I looked at nearly every other manufacturer and source out there and never could find the range of options S&N offered (especially with the tape options for blinds), but I knew I'd kick myself if I ordered from them and then had to spend months trying to rectify their errors, as many others seemingly had done.

So I have no first hand experience with them, but have read many horror stories from others online.

[DebbieJ]

I was pleased with the service from selectblinds.com. They often run 20-25% off sales (like right now!) AND they are through ebates.

We got faux wood 2" blinds for four different windows. They arrived quickly and my dad didn't have any problems installing them for us. :)

~ deb
DS born at home 12/03
Breastfeeding After Reduction is possible! www.bfar.org

http://www.bfar.org/members/fora/style_avatars/Ribbons/18months-bfar.jpg

[DebbieJ]

I was pleased with the service from selectblinds.com. They often run 20-25% off sales (like right now!) AND they are through ebates.

We got faux wood 2" blinds for four different windows. They arrived quickly and my dad didn't have any problems installing them for us. :)

~ deb
DS born at home 12/03
Breastfeeding After Reduction is possible! www.bfar.org

http://www.bfar.org/members/fora/style_avatars/Ribbons/18months-bfar.jpg

[alexsmommy]

Same here. We got real wood with tape and they look great. Easy to install, good sales all the time (there is literally always a sale, so watch for when the price truly drops to the 25% off range like today) no problems. We would definately use them again.
Alaina
Alex Feb '03
and #2 in early summer '07

[alexsmommy]

Same here. We got real wood with tape and they look great. Easy to install, good sales all the time (there is literally always a sale, so watch for when the price truly drops to the 25% off range like today) no problems. We would definately use them again.
Alaina
Alex Feb '03
and #2 in early summer '07

[dinanatul]

We have some custom solar roman shades that we ordered from Smith and Noble because they are the only ones who make them and I wanted something more formal than solar roller shades. S & N is good, but expensive. (sometimes there is a good coupon in the Entertainment Book). They took a little longer to arrive than quoted, but not bad. We have 2 rooms with bay windows. We did 2 separate orders bec we wanted to maximize our coupons - they thought we repeated the order and cancelled one. But one phone call to clarify fixed that.

If you want something decent on a budget - have you tried lowe's. They have Levelor cellular shades for $30 - 100ish that they can cut to your width. They also have cordless cellular shades, but those are only light filtering - not room darkening. You can also try 3 day blinds. depends if u need custom sizes or not. my house backs to woods, so we have held off on some of those windows.

Am still trying to figure out what to do in baby's room (EDA 5/22/08). Best of luck.

[squimp]

We just priced out blinds, and it was a better deal to go through Budget Blinds locally than S&N. They do a free estimate and also install, and they were still about $100 per blind cheaper than S&N.

Af ew years ago, we ordered from S&N, cordless honeycombs. They are nice. But they sent us the wrong ones the first time. I also didn't like the swatch ordering process. With a local company, you can actually see all the options beforehand.