"NotGonnaTakeIt" wrote in message

I called FastFloors.com and got a quote of $5.30 a square foot, which
was $2.00 a foot less than the lowest local store was offering.

I called FastFloors.com back to pay. I was told that the quote
was no good and that I would have to pay $6.15 a square foot.

Lowest price is not always the best value. This sounds sleazy and you won't
have the support that a reputable local dealer would offer.



Bad? It is horrible wood. Nothing at all like Mannington's photos.
I called them up and was told that hickory has lots of "character and
color variation". I was fine with the colors--that is what I loved
about what I had seen. I did not appreciate the worm holes, huge gray
areas, black streaks, wood with defects which had been finished over,
huge knots, etc.

Some of that sounds very typical of hickory, expecially the worm holes and
color variation. If knots are solid they are often considered to be
acceptable. I don' tknow about the other defects as I can't see them. The
samples you were sent should have been a bit more represtative. I think.




My installer told me it was "cabin grade" wood,
which would be fine if we were building a cabin and not a $2 million
contemporary home in Los Angeles.

Cabin grade? I'm not familiar with the term in an engineered wood floor.
OTOH, some woods do look more rustic that others
From Mannington's web site: Blue Ridge Hickory Plank
Blue Ridge Hickory Plank offers a visual with a wide range of color
variations making each floor unique.


Checkk this out:
http://www.mannington.com/residentia... an+Rustics%99

Can you post a photo someplace? How about alt.binaries.test? I'd like to
see how your products compare wiht the brochures.





When they told me that this was the wood I had ordered and that the
photos on their website are not accurate depictions of the products but
merely "room scenes". I wonder what they call the sample boards? The
actual samples they mail...what are those??

This is where the local dealer would be a big help. A good one would have
been at your house to check it out.


My subfloor is so damaged now that parts will have to be replaced, and
the framers glued it to the joists, so we have a HUGE MESS on our
hands!!!! I cannot even imagine the words our contractor must have
uttered when he walked in last week and saw the destruction.

The glued subfloor is a good thing, a sign of quality constructiohn to
eliminate future squeeks. this time it backfired.



Mannington has a pre-installation warranty, whereby a consumer can
hand-select all of the boards to be installed and return the rest for
exchange.

So, what if you order flooring, schedule installers to spend a week at
your home, and half the flooring turns out to look like crap, and there
is no more in stock because it's on backorder???? Does Mannington
warn you? No. Does FastFloors.com? No.

Guess you should have opened more boxes and looke d amore of the boards. I
did that just to mix them up from box to box like in real flooring. What
you describe is not what I see on their web page though. You do have a good
point.

But do they both know that
Mannington's hickory is like this? Yes! It would be so kind of one of
them to inform consumers that they should order twice as much wood as
they determine they'll need, so they can hand-select their boards and
send the rest back.

You bad experience is the first i've heard about Mannington. I'm very
satisfied iwth every single board I bought.


John is going to do his best to fix my subfloor. It looks like a bomb
went off in the home we were supposed to move into in two weeks.
Inspections have been postponed, because we won't pass any of them now.




Will I be responsible for the extra $600-700 in shipping? Will
Mannington really refund my $10,000-$13,000 in "rustic" wood? What
will the State Attorney General have to say about all of this?

Stay tuned.

I will. I'm interested in the resolutionof this.