A California woman canceled a planned kitchen renovation contract after a design firm refused to waive a $300 fee that would have prevented the company from posting photos and videos of her home on social media, a dispute that escalated when the firm’s attorney threatened a defamation lawsuit over her public account of the situation.
Melissa Ann Marie, a content creator who said she experienced a stalking incident last year and holds a restraining order against the perpetrator, said she asked her designer to remove the opt-out fee, citing safety and privacy concerns, before she had submitted a deposit on what she estimated would be a $40,000 to $50,000 project.
@melissaannmariee Im still so upset about this & trying to wrap my head around it. People in the industry please let me know if this is industry standard bc wtttfff. This JUST happened the other day. An almost 40k remodel cancelled because they could not respect my privacy without a fee? #kitchenremodel #homeowner #homeownerproblems #storytime
The firm’s contract included a clause allowing the company to use images and footage of clients’ homes for marketing purposes. Customers wishing to opt out were required to pay $300.
“So there’s like, a clause in their contract,” she said in a video posted to TikTok. “By signing the contract, that means that I’m allowing them to take videos or photos of my home and use it on their social media or their website or whatever. And if I opted out of that, I have to pay, like, a hefty fee. It was $300 just for them to not be able to, like, market my home, which I find quite insane.”
Melissa Ann Marie said the designer had already posted renderings of her home to social media before a contract was signed, prompting her initial request to stop.
“When we first started working together, she had, like, posted, like, the renderings of my home, like, on her thing,” she said. “I just sent her really polite, like, respectful, like, hey, can you please no longer just, like, post my home on social media? Just because I explained to her everything I’ve been through. I’m public facing, I do share my home. Some people will recognize it. I don’t want my home tied to anything. I do it to, like, protect my safety. Last year, I went through a stalking incident. I had a man come to my home. I’ve talked about it. I have a restraining order.”
She said the request was reasonable given that she was paying full price for the project.
“I’m a full-paying customer. I’m not getting discounts. There’s no, like, collab or whatever,” she said. “If I’m a full-paying customer, I feel like it’s fair for me to ask that. If I was asking for a discount or we were doing some sort of collab, it totally makes sense. Obviously, you know, you would be getting marketing in exchange, but we’re not doing that.”
She said she contacted the designer by text to ask for the fee to be waived before signing the contract and submitting a deposit.
“I sent a text message to my designer that I’ve been working with, who I was about to sign a full-blown kitchen remodel contract with and have gotten multiple renderings and been excited about this,” she said. “I just sent her a text saying, hey, I would like to politely ask you to take that $300 fee off because I’ve expressed to you what I’ve been through. It’s a safety issue, it’s a privacy issue. I don’t want my home tied to your business publicly at all. I’m 100% full paying customer and I just think that an extra fee for not being able to use my home as marketing is like unreasonable.”
The firm declined.
“I just got a text back from her saying that they will not do that,” she said. “I’m just so pissed off right now because I have put in so much time and effort working with these people and talking to them. I have not yet put a down payment down. I was about to do that. That’s what I was about to do. That’s what she sent me the contract for. I was putting my down payment down and I’ve been, you know, I’ve been waiting like a few days cause I really wanted to like sit down and go through the contract.”
Melissa Ann Marie canceled the project before submitting a deposit. She subsequently posted a video describing the dispute, saying she removed all identifying information about the company from her account.
“I was respectful enough to retract all identifying information. I never ever had any kind of intent to bring her business down,” she said. “What I really wanted to do was have a conversation about like how shitty it was.”
The firm responded by having an attorney contact her over potential defamation, she said in a follow-up video.
“Just having someone threaten to sue you is not a fun experience, even though I know it won’t go anywhere because it’s truly not defamation,” she said. “She’s doing the opposite. Like, she’s doing what? It just doesn’t make sense. And I think what makes this so much worse, I don’t think that you need a protective order to ask for the respect of privacy of your own home.”
@melissaannmariee Replying to @Le Sandwich it just feels so backwards & now she threatened me for defamation for sharing my experience even though I never mentioned her name or business or any identifying information.
Melissa Ann Marie also noted that California law requires contractors to obtain client consent before sharing images of clients’ homes online and argued that the firm had already violated that standard by posting her renderings without permission.
“I looked it up. It is California law where you do have to get the consent of your clients to share their home online,” she said. “She shared a rendering before even getting my consent.”
She further argued that charging a fee for opting out does not constitute genuine consent and challenged the notion that marketing costs should fall on clients.
“When you’re signing a contract, and you basically say, hey, if you don’t agree to this, you have to pay a fee, how is that consent?” she said. “That feels more like trying to make someone say yes by being like, well, you’re gonna have to pay more money if you don’t say yes. That’s not like consent to me. Consent is, hey, here’s an option. Do what feels comfortable.”
On the question of marketing responsibility, she added: “In what other world is marketing your client’s responsibility? I understand that it’s nuanced and sensitive because the product is your client’s homes, but that’s why it’s a sensitive thing. And you just have to get their consent.”
She also addressed critics who questioned why she shares her home on her own platform but objected to the firm’s use of it, citing the specific risk posed by the company’s targeted local marketing.
“The problem with me being, like, connected to their business is that they’re very heavily marketed in a very specific location that I live in,” she said. “So if I was connected to them, people would know the exact location where I live. And it makes it 20 times easier to find my home. If you have the exact region of where someone lives, and then you do the image reverse search, done. It is so easy to find people’s homes.”
She added, “First of all, it’s my home, my rules. I’m going to share what I’m comfortable with.”
The post She’s Paying $40K for a Kitchen Remodel. The Company Still Wants to Charge Her $300 Extra Just to Keep Her Home Off the Internet appeared first on Where Is The Buzz | Breaking News, Entertainment, Exclusive Interviews & More.
