Review on Achim Home Furnishings Cordless Plantation by Ronny Welch

Although the blinds themselves appear to be of decent quality, the parts and accessories are just terrible. Good things first: The blinds are well packaged and they are well designed and nicely laid out. I like the double pulley that swings the blinds up and down. The 3-string pulley is also nicely designed with a nice firm string lock that keeps the pulleys in place after adjustments are made. The color is real mahogany, with a non-glossy finish. Important Note: While the blinds are 2 inches tall, the blind mount is almost 3 inches tall! Be careful when measuring the depth of the window niche. Since my indentation is 2 inches, I now have a large metal bracket sticking out of the indentation about 1 inch and it looks very silly. Now for the bad. There are so many bad things out there. First, the included screws are cheap and easy to remove. I had to work really hard to get them out when my screwdriver ripped them off. Use real brass screws instead! In addition, the instructions are written in very poor English, obscuring the most important parts and giving strange attention to small problems. Is it really that hard for an American intern to rewrite this thing in an hour? Next comes the vinyl cover that you attach to the metal blinds from the front so you don't see the ugly metal. Problem: The vinyl face is a half inch shorter than the blinds, and the plastic clips that attach the face to the metal push the face out almost a half inch. Also, the clips don't fit the face, making them almost impossible to install. I had to seriously tinker with the plastic back panel to get the clips in place. The result is something that doesn't look much better than bare metal. I think I'll do my own assembly and forget clamps. Finally, to adjust the length of the blinds to fit your window, the instructions (in poor English) tell you to cut and retie the cords. Thanks but no. In general, I like the blinds themselves. For $40, it's hard to beat. But the rest of the packaging just stinks. I have to do my own work to make it look really nice.