When 'Luxury' Becomes a 6-Week Delay and a Payment Dispute

I want to start by saying this clearly: the wall panelling and custom TV unit in my living room are genuinely among the most beautiful things I've seen in a residential interior. The craftsmen Metro Décor employ produce work at a level most firms can't match.

I also want to say this clearly: if you hire Metro Décor today, you should go in with your eyes open about what the experience will cost you beyond the contract value.

We signed with them in August 2024 for our 4BHK in DLF The Crest, Gurugram. The contract was for ₹19.8L across all rooms, with a committed handover of sixteen weeks. We are now twenty-two weeks in and have just completed a snag resolution session that took four escalation emails to schedule.

The problems began at the payment milestone stage. The contract defined Milestone 3 as payable upon "carpentry carcass completion across all bedrooms." When the invoice arrived, only two of three bedrooms were at carcass stage. When I flagged this, I was told the third bedroom was "substantially complete." I held the payment for ten days and eventually released 80% after a site visit confirmed partial progress. This kind of milestone ambiguity is where disputes start.

Communication through execution was the second major failure. The project manager who signed our contract left the company in month two. His replacement had no briefing document. We spent two full evenings re-walking the flat and re-explaining selections that were already documented. This is a process failure that a well-run studio would never allow.

The six-week delay cascaded from the above. At no point did Metro Décor proactively offer a revised timeline — I had to request it, and the first revised timeline they provided was itself missed by two weeks.

Would I hire them again? No. Would I display their work proudly? Every single day.