We weren't going to do a review, but decided to share our experience. You're reading this because A) you're looking for a flooring company, or B) you're completely pissed about how things went with this company and are looking to see If you're the only one who shares that sentiment.
We got 3 quotes for our flooring job, the first two came in at around $6500, and we were very specific about what we wanted... 1/2" carpet pad, the best carpet, and engineered hardwood in one of the guest rooms. Empire's sales guy dropped by for the third company's quote and after a long presentation about 50% off and special deals due to the Covid situation, the list price was over $12,000 BUT, drum roll please, with the 50% off, they could do the job for around $6,500! My wife and I shared a giggle and a foot kick under the table. We couldn't help but like this guy, and the material was in stock, unlike the other two companies, so we decided to go with it. We made the appointment, carpet in a few days, wood flooring the following week. The morning of the appointment, we got a call that the installer called in sick... reschedule. We both stayed home and had cleared all the rooms, prepared for the carpet, a bit of an inconvenience. OK, a few days later, they show up. The installers were nice and did a good job. My only complaint was that one side of the hallway carpet came up from the floor due to there not being more than a couple tacks left on the old tack strip they reused. I called and texted, and then e-mailed the sales guy, got no response. I called the 800 number, left a message, got a call back a couple days later from some guy with an attitude who told me it's common practice to reuse tack strips. I replied yes, I know, but not when the strip is 40 years old and most of the tacks are missing or unusable. He sighed, and said they'd come look at it at some point, but I said don't waste your energy and then I went ahead and fixed it. A few days later, the guys who were going to install the wood floor showed up. I had removed the baseboards, because sales guy told me we could put 1/4 round over where the flooring met the baseboard... not the look we wanted. They walked in and plopped down a pile of some thin floppy rubber looking material with a picture of wood on it. This portion of the job was going to be around $1500, so at that point, looking at what probably cost them a couple hundred dollars in material at most, we politely asked them to leave.
We bought some hardwood and did the job ourselves, underlayment included, for about $1,000 less.
So, that's a long story only to share our experience with this company. You have to decide for yourself, maybe you'll have better luck. I have to say that the carpet is great, now that I've tacked it down completely. The fact that they tried to sell us that crap flooring for $1500 just really didn't sit well, so we wanted to share.
Empire, please don't reply with that cut and paste "sorry to hear that, please call us", or "we can't find your account"... we're done, and all is good now. We'll put this behind us. read more