Lumber Liquidators

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We placed the order March 30, 2014. We were told the wood would be available late May. (We had a miscommunication with a previously contracted flooring installer and cancelled that order. Our old flooring was already ripped out and we were walking on plywood subfloor.) We decided to wait until May and proceeded with the order. In mid April, the store manager called us and said that the production date was set back to sometime in late June, but that couldn't be guaranteed. However, if we didn't want to wait, she had located a large amount of flooring in upstate New York. It would cost us an additional $900 to have it shipped down to us. On the original order, the 10 cent discount wasn't taken off (if you buy more than 1000 sf.), so with negotiation, we split the difference and it would 'only' cost us an additional $500 to have it shipped. This wood was not exactly what we ordered: the floor we ordered had a new finish on it and didn't have a production date. This wood was the "old" finish and was less expensive than what we ordered. However, now that there was no end in sight, we reluctantly proceeded with the order. The flooring arrived on April 22 and was acclimated for 14 days. After we got into the installation of the flooring, it became evident that there were MANY flaws in this wood. The boards had equidistant marks and dents (like from some kind of packaging equipment), many boards had "orange peel" finish, there were cracks along the edges in many boards, many boards had peeling finish along the edges. To top it off, there were an unbelievable amount of boards shorter than 18 inches. Unfortunately, were were already 30 to 40% into the installation before these flaws became evident and couldn't stop (there were 2 lots--1 was not bad, and the larger one was really bad). We couldn't order replacement flooring because we were informed there just wasn't any available anywhere in the amount we needed. We started culling out the defective pieces and continued with the job. When finished, we had 10 boxes of defective flooring that were unusable (above and beyond the usual 10% waste). We actually started running out of wood to finish the job. To be fair, when we contacted the store to let them know what was happening, the manager scrambled to find us 5 additional boxes so that we could finish the job. We contacted the store for a return/refund on this unusable wood and were "kicked up" to Corporate. Corporate has since sent an independent flooring inspector to investigate. His report states that these were manufacturing defects, but Lumber Liquidators is refusing to stand behind their product, instead hiding behind their warranty and saying this is an installation problem: the early flawed pieces that were installed shouldn't have been, and too bad, once it's in, you accept it and you own it, and by extension all the other pieces that have the defects are acceptable, too. We asked only for compensation on the unusable wood which was culled and is still sitting in our garage. They are refusing to honor our claim. UPDATE: We have been contacted by customer service, who agreed that this seemed to be a manufacturing defect. LL has agreed to refund us the amount of the defective wood, which is what we asked for. We have been treated fairly by this company, so I have changed my initial rating of "F" to "C" (average).