When You Have No Options--Is This Extortion?
 

This week we replaced the original carpeting in our LR\DR with a laminate floor. The job got off to a bad start. The installers removed the carpet and padding, and then “discovered” that there were several depressions in the concrete slab. What a surprise! (We understand anecdotally that an imperfect slab is par for The Villages home construction. The installers called the flooring store who then called me back directing me to pay them $300 to fix the floor. They really had me over a barrel. Either live with the house upside down indefinitely or agree to pay. It felt like extortion, and I wonder how frequently this happens. Has anyone else had a similar experience and how you do deal with it?

George

Maybe the one year warranty would cover this expense? Seems to me that the Villages should compensate you the money for those depressions. Maybe if enough money is dished out from enough sites, the concrete people will start paying attention to their sloppy work.

Replaced my LR/DR/Den with laminate and for what's it worth, concrete was in good shape. Agree with checking under 1 year warranty for repairs. We had Floormasters and they did a good job. Who is your flooring contractor?

Floormasters just ripped up 1500 sq feet of flooring in our 14 year old designer. They are used to working in TV. They found the floor uneven and some cracks. There was never any talk of more money. They just sent a larger crew the next day. We are thrilled with the results.

I have actually done this myself. $300 seems excessive. You can level the depressions in no time at all. Easy fix.

It should be covered under TV home warranty; even if past the warranty deadline date, this is a latent defect, so should still be covered. If you cannot get the flooring company to revise the charge, if you feel it was too much, then TV should either refund you the full amount or debate with the flooring company the reasonableness of the cost of the repair.

I appreciate everyone's input. We will be here 5 years this December and I suspect our original home warranty that may have covered defects in the slab has already expired. In this kind of situation, you have only a few minutes to make a decision before the installers walk off the job. In our case, we also had painters scheduled to come a week later, which added some urgency and the need to get this job finished. Next time, we'll use Floormasters as suggested. I was just curious if this has become standard practice in this area to squeeze money out of people--after the sale.

George

We replaced our new carpet with wood flooring shortly before we moved in and part of the cost included taking care of any problems with the floor so they would have a level surface to work with.

We replaced old carpet with wood floors and it too included any leveling that had to be done. Just curious........why have the floors done before painting ??? We had painting done first, didn't matter if some crazy thing happened with the paint. Hope your floors are beautiful and you love them !

We were unsure of the best sequence. In the end, we opted to do the floor first because it involved making the most dust and dirt.

This is an update to my earlier post about my laminate floor install last week. The salesman who sold us the laminate floor came back yesterday afternoon for the balance. He told me instead of complaining to him that I should be writing a letter to the Morses about the poor finish on the slab. He said they should have charged me $500. My response was that if they had actually done the job properly, I would have paid $500 but they put less than an hour into leveling the floor, that areas were still not level, and that they hadn't even earned the $300. I wasn't looking for an argument, or a reduction in the final price. At this point, all I wanted was a simple apology for a job that could have been better. According to the salesman, this crew has done over 1,000 jobs and we're the first to complain. Yeah sure!

George

So what's the name of the company so they can be avoided by others. Curious minds want to know.

pm me if you don't feel comfortable saying who they are on this site. Thanks..........

Ajack, I was a flooring installer for 24 yrs, mainly commercial over concrete, we installed every type of floor imaginable. e.g. lets say we had to take up the old carpet to put in a vinyl tile floor, once the carpet is removed(it masks any floor indentations) we would find major depressions sometimes that could not be installed over without the customer rejecting the job, so it had to be patched and filled in, somebody has to pay for that work, so the Superintendant of the job would sign job tickets for the work to be billed.
Same thing with your floor, if it was new carpet being installed and it would not be noticeable, but with any type of vinyl or wood, it has to be fixed, the salesman at the time would not be able to determine that with carpet down.
No, the flooring company did the right thing, you wouldnt have wanted them to go over a major depression in the floor, they had no idea what was beneath that carpet and arent responsible for a bad slab, whoever poured it is.

The flooring company only did the right thing if the customer was told that the floors in TV often need additional work to level them and here are the extra charges. When you deal with an experienced contractor they know the issues.
That's why you get a flooring contractor and not a few boxes of flooring and some guys off the street.

Correct Snowbird, I know when I was installing I wanted to get the job done as quick as possible and as much professionalism to boot, last thing I wanted to do is get latex patch mix, pour it into a 5 gallon bucket, break out the drill and paddle, mix it up and pour, then .....I have to wait for it to dry before continuing, which could delay the job for a day or so, no installer wants to do that, they want to get it over with.
You should be glad they held up the job, so of these off the street guys will cut corners and go ahead and lay over it no matter what the slab looks like, then it is going to telescope thru and look like hell.

I didn't mention the name because I don't want to have to defend myself against a civil defamation lawsuit. (I read over the weekend that hotels are beginning to file lawsuits against customers who complain on public web sites.) If you're in the market for flooring, send me a pm and I'll tell you who we used. It's also worth noting that the finished floor fromanyone will only be as good as the installation crew who shows up that day.

I also didn't mention in my earlier comments that the installation crew undercut each door jam by more than 1/4" more than was necessary which they later filled with caulking. (The finished cut should not have been more than a credit card.) They also cut into the baseboard moulding 6-8 inches on either side of each door jam--why?

On all laminate flooring there's supposed to be a 1/4" gap by the wall for lateral expansion. In my case, some walls had none, and others had a 1/2" space. They corrected this defect subsequently but it was a lot more difficult for them than if they had used spacers to begin with.

I had this same job done over the summer in Yonkers, NY. The installer was from Equador with a helper from Mexico. They also had to use the floor leveing mix. When they were finished, you could'n't ask for a more perfect job. They had to cut around pipes and radiators.

Our salesman, instead of listening and wishing us a better experience next time became very defensive. There are just some situations that are almost indefensible and you shouldn't try to defend them. Shoddy workmanship is one of them. If our future plans call for flooring, we'll try Floormasters.

George