PHILLIPS FLOORING CTR

Phillips Flooring did a terrible job installing our expensive wool carpet and hardwood floors during a renovation. Installers were rude and threatened to walk off job. They did not assess the scope of the job properly and communicate with us well leading to cost overruns. The owner actually came on site and was verbally aggressive to us and got in our face to try to intimidate us in our own home when we had issues with the way the job was going and wanted to talk about improving the performance and resolving the issues at hand. When we spoke about our concerns with the job he would ask us "what we wanted him to do about it" - answering us with a question that we could not technically answer since we were not the professional and would simply ask him to "make it right". He would tell us that it was as "good as it was going to get"... We eventually gave up dealing with him because there was not going to be a resolution in trying to negotiate business with a man who just wanted to intimidate us. We ultimately had a carpet/flooring industry inspector come out after we were done and settled in the home and he did a thorough impartial inspection of the installation as determined by industry standards. He determined that Phillip's Flooring had failed to do a proper job, installation as determined by industry standards. They are a horrible company to do business with. Sub-par performance and job for the $51K paid. They were the weak link in our whole-house renovation!

Initially they were good to work with in the showroom. They had a nice choice of wood flooring to look at. However, the wool carpet selection was slim - one choice - they did get a second option for us but failed to tell us it was a commercial grade wool carpet. It was better than the first option and we chose it. It was hard to discern that it was a commercial piece of a 5 by 5 sample piece. Once it was laid down - it clearly looks commercial and not residential. But from the beginning of the installation their installers were uncooperative with the rest of the trades-people that were working in the home. They threatened to walk off the job at least once knowing we had a hard move-in date set and uncaring of the consequences it would have to the work and trades-people that depended on them completing their jobs in a timely manner. We had told them that the sub-floor in the flooded area would have to be replaced (as told to us by others that bid for the job) and in their quote they indicated that it was fine as it was - hence our initial contractor insisted on having them do the job. Once into the renovation and on a day that the hardwood floors were actually being laid down the installers demanded that the sub-floor needed to be replaced by our carpenters - which was not accounted for in their scope of work or time. It was truly a fire drill for the carpenters, our NEW project manager/contractor and our pocket book since we hadn't anticipated paying extra for this because they told us it wasn't going to need to be done. And of course their staff wanted to leave the renovation site and come back at some other ill-defined date due to this which was going to interrupt all of the trades-people from moving forward with their projects accordingly. They failed to order enough hardwood so we could lay hardwood under our kitchen cabinets - so we forfeited doing that. They failed to tell us that we could have the new hardwoods put down on our newly widened stair case and instead the stairs were stained with some stain on wood that didn't come close to the new modern woods that we chose. At a later date Shane (the owner) commented that we should have had the stairs done in the same floor- wood and we were astounded - because we had no idea it was an option! It was never spoken of at the time of sale. Ultimately we paid our painters to make a mess in our newly painted house to sand them down and try to get them closer to the color of the new floor... It was emotionally defeating. In an upstairs bedroom we had a laminated floor that we wanted pulled up so we could lay down new wool carpeting and they wanted to lay the carpeting down right on top of the old wood. They could have cared less about our wishes and the fact that the transition would be higher coming from the hallway to the carpet and room to room across the landing. It was a major battle to get them to comply with our wishes and even then they did an extremely poor job of pulling up the old laminate and it is uneven underneath the wool carpet. Throughout the wool carpet installation their seams are apparent and shoddy. We called them back again and again and Shane asked us "what do you want us to do about them"? When my reply was "make them better" - he answered to the effect that "they are as good as they are going to be". Shane came onsite and actually got verbally aggressive with us and raised his voice, got in our space and tried to intimidate us. We literally had to tell him that he doesn't do that in our home... We've had five (5) other carpet professional out to look at the wool carpet installation and all have concurred that the seams are poorly done and that they could and should have been placed elsewhere where they would not be so predominant. They concur the carpet was laid to use the least amount of carpet - and as such we have seams where they ideally shouldn't be and thus pieced together. We have learned that the seams are both too close together in spots and have gaps in other spots - sometimes in the same long seam - which is causing them to look so obvious. We were also told that there is nothing to be done since the carpet is a commercial grade (this is how we found out we have commercial carpet) and the nap is so tight. Phillips Flooring was the single weak link in what was a year-long renovation. It was a terrible experience to deal with them. Ultimately - when it came time to settle up the final bill - Shane was very active and responsive. He had his staff email me repeatedly and he came to the house to collect the payment in person. I found this ironic since there had been times throughout the renovation that we had asked for his email and phone number - asked him to come to the job site when things weren't going well and he could never make himself available. Clearly his priority was not on the job or his customer or even on a resolution to any of the problems at the end but on getting his payment.