I am the owner of a contracting company that does primarily interior renovations and tenant improvements for private homeowners and property management companies in the lower mainland. We members of the GBHBA, fully insured, and pride ourselves in great customer service, attention to detail, and a job well done.
The first job Mike's Flooring did for us was a laminate floor installation in a small condo in downtown Vancouver. The job was done quickly, and quite well. No problems at all.
The next job was a small basement suite in Morgan Creek. Kitchen lino and laminate. There were some small issues with this job...poor joint on a t-mould transition strip, the same transition strip was cut 1/2" too short right in the entry way leaving a big gap where it was supposed to meet the baseboard, and the laminate flooring was not installed far enough into the closet to properly mount the bifold doors....we had to cut down the bifold doors because the transition strip was in exactly the wrong position. A little annoying, but all things I could take care of myself. I sent them a kind note letting them know of these issues, and said that I would take care of them myself. I did not get a reply saying something like "Sorry about that Rick....thanks for the feedback, we will make sure that doesn't happen next time". No reply at all. A little annoying, but not the end of the world.
The last job they did for us...totally different story. Basement suite, carpet and lino throughout. There were big bubbles left in the linoleum all over the kitchen/diningroom floor. I had to get my own linoleum roller to roll out the lino properly. The lino was not properly adhered at the edges near the patio sliding door, and it was not siliconed as is common floor laying practice. The lino was also not siliconed to the bathtub in the bathroom. Oh well, I thought, I will take care of that myself I guess. Life could be worse. I again let them know of the deficiencies and that I would take care of the problems to save the installer another trip out. But the carpet was a whole different story.
They measured the carpet cuts for one of the rooms too small so that we were left with a 2 foot section in the middle of the hallway. Rather than get the carpet re-cut, they decided to seam a 2 foot piece in the middle of the hallway in a very high traffic area. That is bad enough, but the seams were done very poorly, partly owing to the fact that one of the pieces of carpet had been laid crooked so that the carpet patterns did not match up at the seam. This was the first week of September.
My customer of course complained, and I didn't blame them at all. I called Mike's Carpet and told them about the problem, and also emailed them outlining what the cause of the problem was (ie: one piece was cut too short, one piece was installed crooked, the 2 foot seamed piece looked very poor. They asked if I wanted them to send out the rep from the carpet manufacturer. I told them I didn't think it was a product issue, but rather a measuring and installation issue. But, I met with the rep who agreed with me. I went back to Mike's again and asked for a resolution (a piece of carpet big enough to replace one of the ones that were too small to begin with so that the customer would not have to look at two ugly seams in the middle of their busy hallway). When they finally got back to me two weeks later, they said they would take care of the problem. I explained to them quite clearly that this was holding up my getting paid for the job and that I needed it to get done quickly.
Well, finally the installer came back to deal with the issue. I unfortunately was not at the site that day. What he did was to remove the 2' piece of carpet, and re-seam a new piece of carpet in its place. The seams were worse than the first, but the topper was that the piece he installed there was from a different dye lot!! Looked horrible. Customer very unhappy, I was unhappy, and I was still not paid (Oh, incidentally, Mike's was only too happy to take full payment from my credit card the same day the carpet was originally installed in the first week of September).
All this while I had to make several phone calls to the office, texts, emails to get a response from Mike about this issue.
So finally, in mid-October, a full 6 weeks after the job had originally been "completed", and a few days after they said they would come right away to finally fix the problem, I asked if they would supply a piece of carpet (specifically in the same dye lot) and I would pay to have my own carpet installer come to make the proper repair. They agreed. Carpet came, wrong dye lot. Two calls back to Mike's Carpet. No reply. So, to repair a problem that should have been easily fixed by mid September, I am now faced with having to replace carpet in the entire suite. Mike's Carpet? I think not. read more