Rudi Steele Travel

So I was trying to plan my honeymoon to Italy and Rudi Steele came recommended by a family friend. I had high expectations, but talking to Fran (the travel agent) really left a bad taste in my mouth. I understand it is a luxury travel agent and they provide the best experience for their clients (but isn’t that latter the point for all agents?), it seems like they only want you to spend as much as possible on the trip and won’t take into consideration your budget.
I had a 10−15K budget and Fran made it seem like it was extremely unreasonable. I would think a travel agent would want to work with their clients to create a trip and experience within their budget — but not Fran. She really talked down to me. You would think that she would want customers for life as we are a young couple that likes to travel frequently, but I guess they are used to serving only the extreme wealthy. She really gave off this pompous, pretentious vibe in her conversations with me.
Oh, Fran also would not commit to telling me how much time it would take to research for our trip since they charge on an hourly basis which I thought was ridiculous — a ball park estimate would be good. We’re not hard to deal with. Also, she quoted me a price on the roundtrip airfare for $ 1000 more than what I found with a simple online search.
Anyway, I ended up finding another travel agent at Custom Escapes that IS willing to work within our budget AND make it an awesome experience. The customer experience is fantastic and she has even marked our excursions/​restaurants/​etc all on one map for us!