The Empire Today flooring experience.

You've no doubt seen the commercials and heard the jingles: well done, that.

I'll let my wife tell it:

Rapidly finding out, you get what you pay for. We need new flooring due to the flooding a couple of weeks ago. We went with Empire Today because their pricing was about $1,000 less than the other bid. Flooring was supposed to be installed yesterday, they cancelled due to issues with the installers vehicle. I called this morning to confirm today's installation, and seems like they are going to not get it done today either. I will be cancelling that order and paying a more money to go with the other company.

Shortly thereafter, this young man shows up before we could cancel the order, to install the flooring.  So, we let him in.


He was wearing a "Lowes Independent Contractor" sweatshirt, which ought to tell you something.

And he goes to work
....

Well, it can get worse. Very nice and young guy comes out to install the flooring. He has on a Lowes independent contractor sweatshirt BTW, so clearly the installers work for everyone. He doesn't have a crowbar to pull up the tack strips, Kelly lends him one. He goes back later to check on the flooring and the kid is putting laminate flooring down on concrete with no underlayment. (The special padding used on laminate floors... imagine the noise one of the floors would make, laid down on concrete, as you walk on it.) Kelly asks him what he's doing. He says they didn't put any in his car, even though it's on our order paperwork. And oh, he's never installed this kind of flooring before. So he thought it wasn't a big deal. Needless to say, we have cancelled the whole order, saving $900 bucks isn't worth the aggravation and ineptness of this company. Never do business with Empire Today.

But wait!  There's more!
....

AND...I forgot the best part. We told the kid we were going to not continue with the installation. While I am on the phone with them cancelling the order, rather than reschedule someone to bring the underlayment out and install the floor properly. The kid up and leaves and leaves all their product here. Not one freaking word from him. Now I have their stuff in my house and I have NO IDEA when someone is going to come and get it! Such bad business.

So, there you have it.

This is how we were treated by this nationwide flooring "arranger," and now our floors... which we would pay cash to get installed... have to wait as we restart the process all over again.

We've received a great many referals and will look at all of them.  But do yourself a favor: don't get your flooring through a store or store chain that subs it out.

You might pay more in the end, but you'll be much happier about how you're treated and what the end result actually is because, remember: you're gonna have to live with it.