melanie in Amherst, MA

If you love fabric, this is an amazing place. The fabrics are wonderful. They are beautiful, opulent, fun, colorful, high quality. Great variety. I bought fabric for curtains for my daughter’s bedrooms. Great customer service.

We love our miele vacuum cleaner and our miele supply dealer. Locally owned, nice person, good customer service. The vacuum has never had to be repaired, but we buy our bags and HEPA filters there.

We purchased a playset from Chris Heon. He walked us through the process of designing our playset, and provided customized service. It only took him 3 weeks to build our playset. Then he brought the playset to our house in pieces and set it up for us! He told us to call him with any questions or concerns. That was 5 years ago. The playset is still going strong and always will because he uses cedar!

I purchased a sewing machine at Sears. It was broken. Sears took it back with no questions asked, even though my daughter had drawn with marker all over the box. I was embarrassed and they said, “Don’t worry about it.” They gave me full credit for another sewing machine which worked beautifully.

I love joanne fabrics. Great stuff and a good selection. I buy fabric there, and other sewing supplies. But, there are often long waits to get fabric cut because Jo-Anns can be short staffed.

We purchased numerous sets of curtains from Country Curtains. Lovely curtains and of high quality. But, the women who worked there were somewhat rude and not very helpful. The customer service at Country Curtains needs improvement.

They have beautiful items in Happy Valley Gifts. I purchased hand painted wine glasses for an anniversary gift. Lovely items throughout the store, a wide selection, and great customer service.

The woman who owns The Blue Marble is so friendly and helpful. And there are many beautiful things in the store. I purchased beautiful handmade chopsticks for a wedding gift.

All Around Tile installed the tile in our bathrooms, and did a great job. They were clean and careful throughout the entire job. Everything looks great, and we would recommend them.

This was the worst refridgerator we ever bought. It was a scratch and dent which means it was only supposed to be dented and there was supposed to be nothing else wrong with it. But the seal never worked right, and the fans kept dying. I have much less trust in Mannys now because of this experience, although we did purchase our next refridgerator from them- but this time it was from the Hadley store, and it was a brand new fridge- but that’s for another review.

This store has such beautiful and interesting housewares. They have everything from rugs to dishes to switch plates, to candles. It’s a 2 level store. I’ve bought many things here, including a novelty gift for a birthday present. The customer service is good, but I miss a really nice, interesting woman who used to work there named Isabel.

I would buy another fridge from Mannys because of the great delivery people who arrived at 6pm and were careful to very careful moving the fridge into the house, unpacking it, and setting it up for me. They installed all the shelves, and showed me all the features of the fridge. They were so nice. I asked how long they had been working and they said since 6am. I couldn’t believe that. They still had more deliveries to make. I asked if they had had dinner and they said there was no time to eat dinner. So, I packed them dinners to go with drinks and sent them on their way. Great customer service.

Ostermans delivers the propane that heats our house. They have s schedule for delivery. I never have to call them. They keep track of it all. We have never run out of fuel. They have never made a billing mistake with us. When I hit the meter with the lawn mower and broke it, they fixed it for free.

We had a geothermal system in our previous home, and these folks are skilled at servicing such systems. They also service other systems. There was a light blinking on our system which wasn’t blinking before. We thought there was something wrong. They came out, and fixed the problem. It only took 30 seconds to fix, so they didn’t charge us at all, and they told us what to do if the problem happened again.

Rockies is often short staffed and often low on inventory for the things I need. I have had to wait too long too many times for help from a store clerk or assistant. I go to Rocky's because they are local.

A beautiful store. Plants are a little pricey, but they have a wonderful selection. Convenient location on Route 116, which is great for North Amherst. They also have a lot of household items, but very little of it is to my personal taste.

This local hardware and building supply store is a gem. They grow, mill and sell their own lumber, and have a full line of building supplies, a lot of tools, and paint. They also have women working there, which as a woman I really appreciate. They are friendly, always helpful, and never make me feel stupid, like I’ve felt at other hardware stores. And they bring things to my car, which I usually need because I often have little kids with me.

I purchased lighting fixtures for my entire house at Hampden Zimmerman. The customer service is fantastic. There's a beautiful showroom and lots of catalogs to look through. The customer service people sit with you and help you choose your fixtures--the fixtures that are right for the space and the kind of room, etc.

I have had two pieces of art framed here. The staff have been super professional, and not at all snobby. Very careful and respectful. They praised my choices of mats and frames and complimented me on my taste in art. They may say this to all their customers, but I don't care. It made me feel good.

The carry common and unusual perrenials- a wide and interesting selection. They also carry lots of annuals. Everything changes during the year, depending on what it makes the most sense to plant at the time. Incredibly knowledgeable staff. I have described a plant many times to a staff person and they've known what it was. The only thing is that I had interaction with the owner once who seemed rude.

This is a high end kitchen gadgets shop with lots of great high quality supplies. I bought a stainless steel collandar. Ir's nice. there was a lot of other stuff I wanted there too. shiny things.

We have purchased all our futon mattresses that we sleep on, our bed frames, and our futon couch from Fly By Night. They're friendly and helpful there. They have both reasonably priced items and very high end expensive items- so there's a range to choose from.

There are a lot of places to buy garden plants in the Amherst area. This isn't the best place, and the staff isn't the most knowledgeable, but they do ok, the service is pretty good. They're very very busy usually, so on the weekends it can be hard to get help. But everyone who does help is very pleasant.

I can't wait every spring for the plants for sale sign to go up. This business is owned by a wonderful local woman who runs her own farm. She sells perennials that she's grown herself. And she also sells cut flowers. She's very knowledgeable about the plants she sells. Stone house farm is not just a place to buy garden plants, it's a destination. There are garden paths to walk, a play set for the kids, and chickens, guinea pigs and goats. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Mr. Dunlap is an excellent carpenter. He did a fantastic job siding our home with cedar shingles. He knew to use stainless steel nails, and worked to limit splitting the shingles. He was punctual, didn't swear on the job, cleaned up after himself, and finished when he said he would.

Bruce Coldham designed our home, listening to what was important to us, and offering his expert opinion. He worked with us to design a truly green home, with 7" wall construction, triple paned fiberglass casement windows, sun tempered, with a size and shape that was increase energy efficiency. Our home is impecably designed to meet our needs and help the earth and we could not be happier with both his respectful, and skilled services, and our home. He's highly experienced as well.

If you want to know when to plant your seeds, the best fertilizer to use, and other questions that a small or big farmer/gardener would want answered, Amherst Farmers Supply is the place. Excellent customer service, knowledgeable and friendly staff.

When we decided to buy a home in West Hartford, we decided to have a lead assessment done. We called Steve Craig at Boston Lead Co., and he came over and conducted a professional lead assessment of the house. The test results came back and the lead dust in the house was 600x the EPA limit allowed for a home in which children under the age of 6 would be living. We have 2 children. This was terrifying to us. He consulted us on how to proceed, taking a lot of time with us. Explaining where the problem was coming from, educating us about lead and lead poisoning, and consulting us on how to proceed to fix the problem. He was very ethical and wouldn't fix the problem for us which would have been illegal- because the assessor can't be the one who fixes the problem. We were able to use the lead problem to negotiate cash back at closing on the house and used the cash to fix the lead problem. Subsequent lead testing showed the house to be clean. We are forever grateful to Steve Craig for saving our kids from lead poisoning.

Unusual perrenials, many of which they cultivate on-site. They also grow their own pansies- field grown- which makes them extremely hardy. Beautiful plants. They are also very knowledgeable. In addition, it's also a very fun place for the kids- horses and sheep to look at and feed, chickens to chase, wagons to ride in, and once they even gave my children a tour of the greenhouse.

I rented this van for a woman I worked for who had environmental illness. Because she got sick from all chemicals, she needed special and unusual customer service. She politely asked Potters to hose out the back of the truck before she picked it up, to not clean the truck with any chemicals before she picked it up, and to air out the truck for severl hours before it was picked up. They didn't need to any of these things. They could have said no. They didn't understand environmental illness, but they didn't need to. We were customers and the customer is always right at Potters. They did everything they needed and did it respectfully. Because of this act of kindness they will always have my business.

These people know what they're doing. They are professional, punctual, and write appraisals that are accurate. In particular, we needed someone who knew house to appraise co-housing which is hard to appraise. Shirley at FSI is the co-housing expert.

Excellent customer service here. Also, the staff patiently helped me choose a mat and frame that worked well with the picture. This required a good artistic sense, which this employee had. So, he helped me pick out lovely and interesting colors that I never would have chosen myself. And it looks beautiful.

So many people I meet say that building their home was a nightmare. For us, it was a nightmare in many ways, but NONE of them had to do with our builder. Rich Karsten had a calming influence over the entire process. He's incredibly smart, committed to green construction, and is committed to extremely high quality building. He NEVER cuts corners. He communicated with us every step of the way, treated us with respect, and met with us on countless occasions to walk us through our options. Whenever it looked like we might go over budget, he called us or met with us about our options and worked with us to keep us within budget. And most important he started and finished the job ON-TIME. Also, he does most of his own work, and is highly skilled as both a rouch builder and finish carpenter. He works with excellent quality, respectful and responsive sub-contractors. And, he's a really nice guy.

The Shepards did an excellent job wiring our entire new home. They were astoundingly punctual, courteous, used high quality materials, were smart, helpful in terms of helping us decide where lights should go and where outlets should be, were knowledgeable about town building codes, and were pleasant.

Copperworks plumbed our entire house- new construction. He was professional, polite, trustworthy, clean, on-time, did the work we hired him to do when we wanted him to do it, using high quality supplies. The kind of guy you could have a substantial conversation with.

When we lived in West Hartford, we owned a 1930's home. We needed more outlets, and more lights, inside and outside. The electricians were professional, knowledgable, smart, and completely trustworthy. They did an excellent job with the work, and I would recommend them to anyone.