Empire Today

Also, I told him I wanted the hallway done upstairs and the bathrooms and yet they only did the hallway. So, there must have been some kind of confusion, because when the installers came, I was thinking they were at least going to do one of the bathrooms, if not both. I specifically wanted the bathroom in the bedroom done. But somehow, when the order came out, that wasn't included. So, I figured I have to get that done at a later time. So, I wasn't really happy with those parts. I thought I was on the same page with the sales rep, but we weren't when he left.

The installers worked their butts off though and they got there on time. I liked them. But I wasn't happy with the amount of dust that was created in the spots they were working on. They could have just stapled a piece of plastic between the kitchen area and it would have saved a lot of dust. After they were gone, I had to dust everything in the house and I had to re-wash everything because they sanded the adhesive from the kitchen flooring tile.

Aside from that, I had another property and that was supposed to go down a week before this one, and that one was supposed to have flooring and carpet. So, the sales guy told me the flooring guy was going to come through first then the carpet team would be there. But then they told me if there were some soft areas on the floor, they would let me know. So, there was a soft area in the kitchen that they weren't sure about for the flooring but I figured they could come do carpet on the other parts that we agreed to do, but they didn't. So, nothing got done. I paid the deposit and they refunded all the money.

One of the workers decided that he needed to purchase a special tool. And instead of getting with whoever his contractor was that he's working for to see if they could supply that with him, he went and bought one. And would not finish their job unless my husband paid him the $50 for the tool that he had. And he now has the tool my husband paid him. I didn't like being coerced into paying a gentleman to buy a tool that they should have had to do the job in the first place. We had to get the job finished. I was not happy about that. It was handled badly. I contacted the dispatch manager at Empire and told him the situation prior to them completing the job, and told him what was going on. He said there would be no additional charge for us. But I never heard back from anybody until now.

I had another person call. I told her the problems, and she said she would check in to it, and I had not heard back. I didn't appreciate the lack of response from anybody after the repeated calls I made to try to figure out what happened and why the situation was the way it was. But once the installation was done, it was fine. I'm pleased with it. The flooring looks very good.

The issue was with the communication between the front office and the sales guy. The sales guy did the work on a Thursday or a Friday and he was not available on the weekend for some reason. The office gal would not authorize the installation team to start the job even though I was willing to pay more if it turned out that way. I just wanted to get the job going. At that time, I had all the furniture out and I was living through the weekend with a refrigerator in my bedroom.

After some beating around, the installation team left and I had to wait a couple of more days and a different team came out and the price was accepted. One thing was nobody also made it clear to me until the very end that I had to have the stove out. At the last minute, I had to get some things moved. I'm 50 years old so that's not that easy.

That aside, I was very impressed with the crew that did the work. They were very hardworking and they did a very good job. They had to remove floors without damaging the existing baseboards and that was not easy. They had things watered so it's leveled. They had to level it with some kind of liquid type of material that looked like a bit of a watery cement almost. The boards themselves are nice and leveled. There's no end sticking up. They did a nice job with the seals. The installation crew also put everything back.

If one of my neighbors asked about Empire, I would tell them to be careful about the details. Other than that, the crew worked quickly and they did a good job. I'm very happy with the way things look. I like the idea that this flooring is lighter colored. It makes the room a little lighter. I was also amazed how the crew could take things out without scarring up the baseboards. The removal was excellent.

After that, the next day, I noticed when I was sitting in my bathroom that one of the little planks was sticking up way high that went into one of my bedrooms. So, I had to call back and get them to fix that. And they came back out this past Saturday and fixed that. As far as the products and everything that they did, things looked good. Looking at the carpet and the floor, we love them. And every time I called and had anything that needed to be done, they were right there. So overall, we were pleased with our experience.

The girl that came out here also said something about making it good as far as compensating us on all the time we had left work. There was one time when they were supposed to come out here and put our carpet in that we took off four days of work and they cancelled because the contractor we had was sick. We did three bedrooms at the time and we had to get my son to come out here to help us move our stuff. But no one has done any kind of compensating so far.

The sales rep was knowledgeable. I liked him the first time. He had a good sense of humor and was very personable. Very modern measuring techniques were used so they got the real shape of the room and there were no surprises. It was quite impressive. I went with the least worst of the choices. I got a contractor I had doing my shower door take me to this place that was Granite Expo and they have a huge variety of floors and I saw what I really wanted. But there was no hassle about canceling and there's no hassle about having it corrected.

I'm using my shed for a sewing room and a friend of mine that knows about sewing machine said that I have to be able to be sure that I get it all less vapor, which was why I decided to put the floor in the shed. The guys who did it said they couldn’t go up to the wall. There were a lot of stuff they couldn't do and it was disappointing. But they went way beyond what they said they could do and I was so impressed by that. All I had to do was to caulk along the sides of the walls rather than filling places that were open. They were friendly and very nice. Empire very easy to work with, which was the nicest thing. I had a good experience with them.

The 3 people blamed everything on salesman. Called salesman, which we had to pay 1/2 upfront when he booked us and demanded the rest when the 3 people came in to put down floor. (Which never happened). Long story short, the workers left within an hour. It will take days before we get our 1/2 payment back and now we are left with a home that is in disarray, having to find another company to put down our floor, and unreturned phone calls because everyone that works for Empire does not like each other and everyone is pointing fingers at each other. If you choose this company, you are in for a bad experience. You've been warned.