Orderly Lifestyle

I contacted Carrie Morris of Orderly Lifestyle for help with professional organizing for my business. She talked to me over the phone and we decided to schedule a complimentary 30 minute consultation to figure out how she could help me. We met and discussed the areas where I most needed assistance and determined that my most immediate needs were in creating better systems for organizing the large amount of paperwork that I use in my business. She offered to shop for products that would help me to organize all of this paperwork and we discussed my need to be able to make it portable. I was impressed by her professionalism even though she did not seem like a perfect match for my business. I scheduled three hours of her time for the next week and she said that she would bring any helpful items that she could find the next time we met. The next time we meet, Carrrie brought three products but two were just different colors of the same thing and one was just a slightly larger version of what I already had. The first item was clearly not large enough for what I needed it for. I decided to keep the large one even though I was not convinced it would work (and ultimately it did not). We discussed the fact that I needed a lot of copying done and she offered to do it for me. She charges $35/hour and that was more than I wanted to spend on this administrative work, but I decided that it would be worth it to just get some of it done by someone who would get the job done right. Carrie worked for me three different days for 3 hours each and mostly just did copying. But she also offered to continue purchasing supplies I needed and to bring them the next time we met. I made a point of making a list of what I needed (a cart to help me transport my large file boxes, hanging file folders, a label maker, file folder envelope, etc...) and she wrote everything down and said that she would bring it with her when she arrived to work with me again next week. In the middle of the week she emailed me to tell me that one of the items that she had offered to buy for me was only available on the internet and offered to get my credit card information to buy it for me. (I told her that I would handle the transaction myself.) In the email she also said that she hoped to be able to bring the file envelopes with her the next time we met. I was astonished that she wasn't sure if she would have just one of the supplies that she had promised to purchase for me when we met in a couple of days. I emailed her back and told her that I was expecting the full list of items that we had talked about and gave her the list again. She arrived a couple of days later with the items. I was dismayed that it was clear that I could not depend on her to follow through with the tasks she committed to without reminding her about them. I thought that at least the photocopying was being done in a satisfactory manner. However, as I have been using the packets of materials that she copied and assembled for me, I found several packets that had at least one of several problems: some were missing pages, some were stapled backwards, some were shifted all the way to the lefthand side, and some had the staple hanging off the side. The ones with missing pages were completely unusable and had to be remade at the last minute and caused a considerable amount of embarrassment when given to clients. The others just looked very unprofessional. I cannot believe that I paid $35/hour for someone who did not make a commitment to follow through with what they promised and did not even offer quality service in the jobs they performed for me. I will certainly be far more careful the next time I hire someone.