Brampton Hardwood Floors Ltd

Our customer service manager been in continued contact with Jessica, trying to address her concerns. She provided some of the back-up paperwork to him, but it is apparently incomplete. Regrettably, he is currently away from the office due to the sudden passing of his mother. Despite the fact that we are all working diligently towards a resolution (which should be arrived at as soon as our customer service manager returns to the office), Jessica has unfortunately elected to post this negative review. It would have been nice if Jessica would have reciprocated our good faith by holding off posting until the matter was completed. We will update this response as soon as we can.

Anita, the photograph you posted is not of the product that you purchased. We are very surprised and disappointed by your negative review. Both we and the independent third-party installer were extremely patient and accommodating in all our dealings with you, even in light of your adversarial, unreasonable behavior and constant flip-flopping as to how you wanted us to try and help remedy any concerns.
The wood you purchased was of excellent quality for the price, and in our showroom was always referred to and openly labeled as Traditional/Mill Run. We do not understand why you are now insisting that there was some type of attempt on our part to hide the Mill Run description. By your own admission, the invoice that you signed before picking up the wood clearly stated Mill Run. You did not raise any concern until actually opening the boxes at your home, and then changing your mind and deciding that you wanted a higher priced alternative. You then asked the third-party independent floor installer to stop all work and load the wood into his truck to follow you back to our store. The installer then waited for you for around two hours while we explored different wood grades and finishes that you were considering in place of the original product. You then advised that you were actually satisfied with the original product and had the installer bring the wood back to your home for installation (which would take place the next working day as so much time had been wasted). That night, you changed your mind again and called the installer to advise that you would not be using the product and to have him again deliver it back to our store. Your actions caused the installer to lose two days that he could have used to complete another job. Notwithstanding, throughout all of this waffling on your part, both we and the installer always treated you with the utmost patience and respect (even though the treatment by you was not returned in kind.) The restocking charge is our policy on cancelled orders, and is clearly posted throughout our store and on our invoice. It is unfortunately required to cover our administrative and employee expenses for receiving, repacking and restocking the products. We repeat that we always strive to keep our customers happy and would be pleased to apply the restocking charge to other product if you wish to purchase same from us.

We're glad you are happy with the quality and price you received from us, Juan. We asked our salespeople about your "German product" comment and they believe you misunderstood. Some of the very sophisticated machinery involved in the production of our flooring products is engineered and imported from Germany, but not the wood products themselves. We would also greatly appreciate it if you would contact us to provide further details about your feedback as to the box packing.

Brampton Hardwood is both a male and female working environment. The women working at Brampton Hardwood feel targeted and that your comment is very sexist and they are offended by your words.

Thanks for the kind words and the referrals, Francesco. We work hard on having the best selection and quality around, and its always nice to hear our customers acknowledgement of this.

Melissa, great job on seeing the truth that many other hardwood retailers won't tell you. The slightly cheaper Chinese products cannot hope to compare in quality to the North American products we sell.

It is quite unfortunate that this customer still chooses to denigrate our company after our many, extraordinary efforts to resolve his issues to the best of our abilities.

The St. Lawrence brand of hardwood is manufactured in Bramalea, Ontario and is well known throughout the industry as a respected Canadian producer of top quality hardwood flooring products.

The St. Lawrence hardwood flooring that we provided to this customer was not defective in any way, as he claims. The very slight variations in size and gap were well below the industry standard of tolerance. Wood is a natural and organic product, and is therefore always subject to considerable variations in grain, color, texture, marking and edging. The exotic woods as purchased by this customer have even more inherent variation. We explained to the customer on many occasions that due to the foregoing, he could not expect all of the boards to look uniform when installed. He wanted the uniform look anyway and therefore separated, and didn't use, perfectly good boards that did not match his unrealistic idea of how the finished floor should look.

Furthermore, the customer installed the hardwood himself, with the help of his brother-in-law. Neither of them is a qualified hardwood floor installer. In fact, there were many occasions where we were gracious enough to provide guidance and advice to them on proper installation techniques.

We were always perfectly willing to explore possible accommodations for extra costs of installation. However, when we repeatedly requested copies of an invoice or other proof of the alleged $700 extra costs incurred by this customer, we were always refused (obviously due to the fact that the customer performed the work himself.)

The installation took many months to complete, as the customer was not an experienced installer. A professional installer would probably have taken less than a week to finish such a job. Throughout the long installation process, the customer would pick through the many boxes of material and separate entire boxes that he wanted replaced. Out of good faith, we replaced this material box-for-box whenever asked, on an ongoing basis, from another different batch of the same product. This repeated service resulted in substantial administrative and restocking costs to us.

A qualified and experienced contractor would be aware that there is about a 5% waste factor in any box of hardwood due to the previously mentioned natural variation (i.e. wood knots, etc.) and standard manufacturer imperfections (i.e. edge cut differences, etc.) Such a professional would follow the standard practice of cutting out the small unusable portions of the boards and utilizing the rest accordingly (i.e. as filler or end pieces, etc.). Entire boards would not be discarded due to imperfections to a slight portion thereof, which is what this customer was doing. Because the customer did not maximize his utilization of the material, his measurement calculations ended up being too low and he needed to buy more product to make up for the excessive waste that could have easily been avoided.

Customer satisfaction is of paramount importance to our company, and we therefore sent two professionals to deal with this customer's concerns. One was a qualified inspector who examined the product and confirmed everything stated here. The other was a professional hardwood installer from our independent contractor referral list. This contractor began to install the floor for the customer but could not continue due to the customer's incessant nit-picking and unreasonably high expectations. As would be expected, the professional installer did not appreciate being told how to do his job by someone with no actual expertise in the business and therefore was unable to continue working. This was surely the result this customer wanted, as he always intended to install the floor himself to save costs.

It should also be noted that this customer always had the option of returning the hardwood prior to installation if he was not happy with its quality. Instead, he refused to do so and went ahead and installed it. This clearly shows that the customer was in fact satisfied with the product, but is now trying to wrongfully recoup some of his own personal costs from us.

As is our usual practice, we made great efforts to accommodate this customer. Based on all the facts of this matter we were unable to provide any of the unreasonable resolutions he requested. The customer has already tried to push his complaint through the Better Business Bureau, and they immediately closed this case once the truth was revealed.

Brampton Hardwood has been a trusted retailer for over 25 years, and we always go to great lengths to treat all of our many customers with respect, honesty and integrity.