overcharged by interior designer - threatens my wife

[Marcus Auerbach]

My wife wants to remodel parts of our home and got talking to a friend of a friend, who is an interior designer. We have a nice home, relativley new, but some of the interior was already chosen by our builder when we bought it. The two of them hit it off and my wife said she just wants someone to reflect her own design ideas, which pretty soon turned into a proposed consulting contract. My wife said she did not want to sign a contract, said she just wanted to have someone to look over her ideas for feeback, but agreed to reimburse her for her time. The designer's rate is $130/hr. 

They had several design meetings, usually after work, half an hour or so of reviewing tile samples and pictures of light fixtures and pillows - followed by 3 hours of drinking a bottel of wine and talking about mutual friends and how to safe the world. A lot of the design ideas came from my wife, the designer copy pasted my wife's pintrest board in ppt, added a few slides with other items to consider. My wife was not happy with the consulting, she felt she could look up things online on her own and would not have to pay someone 130 and hour to do that, so she told the designer that this is not what she was looking for politley asked what she owed. 

So we got a bill of $2,500 for consulting services - itemized by hours. 5 hours for online research to find nice looking hardware and copy/paste into pwerpoint, 4 hours for meeting at our residence etc - my wife responded with an email politely asking why there were so many hours, going from line item to line item. She sent a check for the hours she felt were legit (I know, she should not have, but she is very nice and not confrontational) and since then we are getting emails asking for the rest of the money. 

We are 3 months into this, designer say she does not negotiate her rate (which in fairnes we are not, just the billable hours) and the bill is overdue, she keeps pressing my wife for payment. She does not comment on the question which hours were "hanging out with a friend" and which ones were work meetings. My wife says if she knew she were on the clock, these meetings would have been under an hour and not all night. Given the fact that this went from "a friend helping out a bit" to a full blown consulting gig, I am not okay with this.

My wife just wants to avoid the drama and pay her whatever she wants. I am not in favor of that, I don't just roll over, just because someone is pushing. She roped us into a much bigger project than my wife wanted, did not deliver anything that was really useable to us (just a powerpoint with screenshots, mostly my wife's), and charged for social time - which is my biggest issue. I am ready to get involved and tell her she can talk to my attorney.

But before I do that, it would be great to hear some of your opinions, also for my wife to read!