Letter to Carpet Court

Hi Hai

I was away last week, hence the late reply.

I am afraid I’m not satisfied with $1300. I said it was essential to me it was a fair amount. Here are the reasons why this is not the case.

Reason 1: Confirmation that installation was badly done

I’ve had two professional floor installers come through to quote on completing the job recently as I'm too busy to do it myself right now. Both were shocked by the poor quality of the installation and encouraged me to take action with Fair Trade etc.

List of issues that they highlighted:

- In several places, one can feel a significant dip under the planks and an analysis below the planks shows unevenness much greater than there should be. No analysis of floor level was done at all. I don’t think the installer even had a spirit level with him.
- No 3 mm expansion gap left in many places places - photos taken straight after installation with date metadata embedded in file.
- Boards with bits missing at the corners but installed anyway.
- No thought given to placing planks to reduce repeat patterns - especially important with this particular product where there are ONLY 4 repeats.  The product installation instructions clearly say you should have several boxes open at a time to plan this. This was not done. The mark on every 4th plank I hated may not even have been an issue if this had been done and they weren’t all been placed next to each other in crucial places like the corridor.
- Really crude cuts of the planks along the door jams. It would have been so much better to cut under the door jams with a multi-tool. It’s so easy to do and the saw costs less than $100.

- And especially, no advice given to remove skirting boards and install them on top of the vinyl. My skirting boards are nailed on and extremely easy to remove. Just about every single company I’ve spoken to in my research since including other Carpet Court franchises since warns against trim on this product - looks extremely cheap and there’s no need at all to use it.  Why the scotia?  Surely not for the margins?

Reason 2:  No way did I receive 36 boxes

When I asked Alex how many boxes were delivered a few days after installation, he looked carefully into the system and said 35. I was surprised because David left all the empty boxes and I carefully counted 13 which made 33 in total.

I recently meticulously measured and documented the vinyl boards installed and it came to just over 23.5 square metres.  Even with 5% waste, that’s no more than 14 boxes laid. As you know, there were 20 boxes left over.

I believe 33 boxes or 34 was delivered at most. But I’m willing to concede what Alex said the day I came in: 35.  Absolutely no way 36 boxes.

What I am prepared to accept as a fair credit offer

I believe its fair to pay for what I was actually delivered:

35 boxes of vinyl planks at $ 65 per square metre = $ 4186
Very much in your favour as most companies, including other Carpet Court franchises charge $ 50 per square metre for Omega.

Installation of 15 boxes at $ 35 per metre = $ 966
Hugely in your favour given the poor installation, the fact you charged me $35 per square metre when most companies charge $25 or less. This is the easiest vinyl product to install - anyone could do it. Also the vinyl installed was not completed - no scotia applied or filling done to hide the ugly gaps at door jams etc. David was only on site for 7 hours, arriving only at 11 am.

So:
$7100 (total paid)
- less $4186 (35 boxes)
- less $ 966 (installation of 15 boxes)

= Credit of $ 1948

It makes my blood boil to pay for Scotia I shouldn’t have been sold in the first place.  But if you actually provide it to me, I’m prepared to pay for it at wholesale rate (NOT the $ 5 per square metre retail amount) and you can subtract this from the amount above. Maybe I can use it for something, but certainly not on the floors.

If not, then I want the full credit of $ 1948 above. Be assured I have measured my walls and know how much the length should realistically be.

A warning to take this email seriously

After weeks of struggling to accept and get perspective on all this and always having to wait ages for a response plus the confirmation from professionals of what I suspected: that the installation was very poorly done, I’m feeling increasingly irritated.

I’m usually an extremely accepting and accommodating person as you’ve seen.  But I have a dark side to my personality that comes out very occasionally and it can be rampant and devastating when it does.  And if it does, Fair Trade is the least of your concerns. It wants nothing more than to use my 20 years expertise as an Internet marketing specialist to spread the strongest possible disapproval of this job with eloquent words and photos on every single Australian site remotely related to floors as well as all related blogs, discussion forum, search engines, social media and online magazines (through my  journalist contacts) to create so much negative publicity that it will make your head spin.  And none of it will be an exaggeration or lie.

For the sake of our mutual peace, please help me prevent this from happening.  Simply respond without a big delay, offer me fair credit for this unfinished job and fair market rates for the products I decide to buy (plus take my feedback onboard re the installation for future clients) and I will let things be and continue to be friendly and accommodating.

Regards,
Graeme