Michael Liston Floors & Pro Enviro Clean

We were referred to Michael Liston for our bamboo floor installation by ProSource (a floor material wholesaler located off the Burnet Road area in Austin, TX). In the beginning, Michael was very helpful & attentive and his pricing was competitive. But we soon learned that we were not his top priority as he became behind in the job within the first week and a half of starting. Our experience with Michael went dowhill rapidly from there. He initially quoted us that it would take him 2 to 2.5 weeks to complete the job from start to finish based on the 2000 sqf of bamboo that we were laying throughout our house (all rooms except the laundry room & bathrooms). At the end of the day, it took him 6 weeks in total, and he did not even finish the job due to the fact that he was too with other jobs he had ongoing at the same time, but did not alert us of. Therefore, he did not have the time to come & fix the various problem areas or complete the finishing touches (see full list of issues below). Due to the fact that he did not finish the job as initially contracted, we mandated & he agreed to a reduced amount for his final payment understanding the dissatisfaction we had with where he quit the project and the fact that we were having to live outside our house for 3x as long as we had initially planned. - 3 days after laying the wood in the entry way, two of the planks became loose & buckled. We had to hire another contractor to fix/re-lay the bamboo in this area since Michael did not have the time to the fix the problem himself. -He did not clean any part of our floors & left footprints all over & dried glue coming through the cracks between the planks. - He had his wife come & fill and stain some of the cracks between the planks in our floors, but she did not complete the job. At no point in time did he tell us that his wife helped him on his jobsites. Additionally, she brought their son with her who spent the afternoon rolling his toy cars across our new floors leaving various scratches. -Overall poor workmanship = he left loose/crowned planks in the living room & master bedroom, several hollow spots in various corners around the house, the master bedroom, entry hall and front guest room were not leveled correctly, and there are various large cracks between the wood planks across the house that were too big to fill. While we did get some what of a reprieve in the form of a reduced final payment, saying that we were dissatisfied with the final product/his workmanship, his customer service and unwillingness to make the very apparent issues with the floor right is an understatement. But now fast forward 7 months, and our flooring has actually started to fail. We now have loose boards all over the house vs. just the 2 rooms noted above, we have cupping/raised ridges in every room, and we had the planks in our master bedroom fully buckle where they are actually raised 4 inches off the slab in a ramp formation. While we are just now getting into the actual cause of the floor failure, Michael has been completely unwilling to help in this matter. We contacted him on 1/27/12, and he has refused to come out to the house to evaluate the problem, and he has now stopped returning our phone calls and emails. We had the MAPEI glue rep come out this week, which Michael was supposed to show up for in order to pull up a plank to aid in the investigation, and the morning of the appointment, he called the glue rep and cancelled. Due to his unresponsiveness, we have now hired an official National Wood Flooring Association inspector at an out of pocket cost to us of $405 to come & evaluate our flooring issues. I will be sure to follow up with further details once we get the final report back from the NWFA, but I wanted to make everyone aware of Michael's shady business practices immediately to prevent anyone else from being in this situation in the future. It is hard to imagine that Michael has 15 years of flooring experience, and that this is how we treats his customers. You would think that he would be willing to stand behind his work product and have confidence in his craftmanship, especially with a floor that is less than a year old. While the inspector's report could come back with the failure noted as a material or glue issue, I find this highly doubtful based on how Michael initially handled the install and how he is now avoiding the situation all together. We have wanted to handle this as amicably as possible, but Michael has been a barrier the entire way. Now that we're almost a month in, we are refusing to put up with unanswered phone calls/emails or living in an unsafe environment for a prolonged period of time and are unfortunately having to take matters into our own hands to speed the process along. Net/net - DO NOT USE Michael Liston floors or his carpet company Pro Enviro Clean.

It was a very positive experience. Michael took the pains to finish the job perfectly. When he was installing the carpets, that day was very cold, so we had to schedule another day for him to come out because he couldn't stretch out the carpets. He wanted us to wait so that he could do a good job. He and his helper were very courteous. They did a good job and did it appropriately. They didn’t leave until it was all done. His price was good. We also used Michael for couch cleaning. He quoted one price but then he couldn't clean it as perfectly as he thought so he reduced the price. That was just great. He had used all his resources, products, and time but still charged us less because he wasn’t able to do it as perfectly as he thought he would. I would absolutely use him again in the future.