We secured 3 bids to replace the carpet…
We secured 3 bids to replace the carpet in our master bedroom and hallway. Empire, National floors and a local contractor. National gave us the best price and we were very happy with the sales representative, the information provided and the promptness of scheduling the install. They were very thorough in confirming our decision, I received 2-3 calls to verify the style, rooms and date of installation. The installers were great and did a wonderful job. We are very happy with the process. The issues are as follows: National floors will only guarantee the product and installation if your sub floor is perfect, I mean 100% perfect. The installers indicated that our floor was a bit rough, it was a 20 year old subfloor. They contacted National and we were told that if we did not have a new subfloor installed they warranties would not be honored. The price to replace the subfloors for material alone was over $1600 and that was based on my research at Home depot and Lowes. We anticipated another $1500 or so for removal and installation. We discussed this with the installation crew and they felt the existing sub floor was stable and we should not have any issues. Now the cost for the flooring and installation was $4,000. So dropping another $3,000 for plywood seemed a bit outrageous. We opted to move forward with out the new sub flooring. As I said the installation was perfect and the floors look great. We are very happy with the job. Now we expected to get a follow up call or email or text on our satisfaction, but we did not. I waited over 5 weeks and still no follow up. I find this interesting. My concerns are as follows; We opted to not go with the subfloor, Now how many subfloors meet there criteria for the warranty to be effective, how many people put in a new sub floor for fear of having no warrant? My suspicion is that National floor has a greater than 50% rate of not honoring the warranty due to sub standard sub floors. And the lack of follow up makes me think that since we did not opt for the overpriced subfloor, they are done with us, they have our money and will not need to deal with us again. That is pretty sad if I am correct in my suspicions.