Just went to Lumber Liquidators (I read their ad this morning in FH, and then realized they had a location darn close by, and the only one in GA) to check on some flooring for a project. They were super professional, low key, informative, could get what I needed in a week, and were a dollar and a half cheaper than my usual supplier.
I spent a couple of grand, and have every anticipation the material and install will be fine.
Any other experience with them?
Forrest
Replies
Yes, not good, especially on special orders they don't have in stock. Kinda like Home Depot of flooring. Sorry, but your 'experience' may not be over yet. They might just be low key when it comes to service and satisfaction and timing also.
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My contacts with others tell me they are great when it comes to "cash and carry," i.e., you go there, inspect it yourself, count out what you need, pay, and lug it out.
Some times they'll have some great buys. Real jewels. Other times, nada.
Sorta like going to buy some new duds at T.J.Maxx. You gotta nosh through there at regular intervals, never going for anything specific. Got one of those out on the island?
HMMMM!
I'll let you know
Forrest
Forrest,
I've used them several times. Don't be surprised if it takes a little more than a week. I'd say 2 out of 4 of orders have been late, up to a week. I'm DIY, fiends and family, if I was expecting it for a job I'd have been a little bent, but I know just to order from them a little early. Otherwise the product was great. Good quality and have worn very well (pre-finished). Hope they work out for you.
Why ya workin for fiends anyhow?
I've used them several times. They have come thru for us every time we've ordered 3000sq ft. select red oak unfinished the whole lot was perfect, 2100sq ft maple prefinished Bella awsum ! They are my only supplier for flooring!!.
I've used them before for some bamboo they had in stock. Good product, no problems yet and it's been 2 yrs. I got hosed on restocking though. If I recall it was 15-20%. I had two boxes left and the homeowner didn't want them so they ate the cost. Otherwise..............
It's been a year ago now but I couldn't have been happier with my special order of pre-finished red oak nail-down. The product quality was excellent and like has been said before, store personnel (Washington state) are low key. They leave you alone to make up your mind with no hard sell but at the same time, are responsive to questions. I like all that. Would buy again from them in a heartbeat.
Edited 1/28/2006 9:13 am ET by Mike_2
I went there one early Saturday morning. Boy was that a mistake. To think no one would be up and about at 7:30AM was foolish--yeah, me the fool. I started down the street they were on and it was littered with people. I parked all the way down the t-intersection at their Georgia location. No parking anywhere closer. Both homeowners and business subs were there. I gave up and went home. That was almost two hours of wasted time. They are not professional enough to afford a real parking lot and leave potential customers leaving like pissed off fleas.
Then a friend bought a bunch of 3/8" white-oak strips and did about 1,000 SqFt in his home as a DIY fixer-upper and loved them for the material. His experience was completely different. He was not working at the time and could go during the week when most regulars were working. I'd try them again, but the drive for information doesn't make me warm or fuzzy. I tried calling them, and the person I spoke with was rude. I admit to knowing little or nothing about hardwood flooring, but they didn't have to adopt a talk-down attitude and act as if I was wasting their time at 10AM on a Tuesday morning.
Maybe I'll try them again when I retire.
We had a homeowner insist on getting there flooring there. Ok no problem with us.
To lock in there price on Brazillian Cherry we had to order right NOW. Two months before we're ready. OK no problem. We have a nice heated shop we can store it there. It was 29 boxes about 700 sq.ft.
Flooring comes in and I quickle grab a few pieces to give to the customer so they can match it to there other colors of trim and cabinets. 3 out of 5 pieces I gave them had a scratch, a ding, a paint brush bristle in the finish! The owner said I need to see all these. Saturday morning we set up a halogen light and we inspect every piece.
We fill six boxes of pieces, due to poor finish mostly but several had bad milling and chipped corners.
Here comes the part I was surprised with. Homeowner called Lumber Liquidators and in the end they replaced all six boxes and said if you find anymore let us know we'll replace those too.
So I would say good service. BUT I wouldn't expect to find that many bad boards from our usual supplier. That's over 20%. Plus we looked at them well before needing them. Usually we never see them before they are ready to go down. That would have set us back about two weeks if that would have happened.
That's part of the problem. You know they sold all those chipped and dinged pieces to someone who doesn't know any better...Mine was a special order that my owner specificly wanted bought from them because he shared space at a country club or some such thing with the owner of LL.
The service was worse than I could have done elsewhere, the wait time was longer in promise and longer yet in delivery. Matter of fact, now that I remember, they would not deliver it. My other suppliers all deliver for free. So I sent a guy down to get it. He came back piszed at the long timne it took them to even find the order after telling me it was all ready to go. They treated him like dirt too. While waiting for them, he looked at their other stuff and I have seen it a few times since. The prefinished they offer that I have seen and what my man saw that day all looks like th etopcoat was put on with a dirty mop. Full of irregularitioes, gobs, hairs, fuzz, etc. The good thjing is that the finish is riock hard so it should wear well. The bad thing is that the finish is rock hard so it is a lot of work to make it right.OK, so maybe they plan it that way - a non-skid non-slip finish is safer for kids and folks in stocking feet, right?So I only actually bought there once. That was enough to see how they ran their businmess. Dozens of phonme calls going unreturned and even unanswered tells me a lot before even seeing the yard they sell out of. Then on sight, it turns out to be small, cluttered, dingy and dirty - not even safe to walk through...a long ways from professional.That one purchase was priced the same as my regular supplier, and the order was acceptable, but the time it took to deal with them and do my own delivery added 10-12% to the cost for my HO - on a cost plus job so it probably cost him 13% more to buy from an outfit purporting to be the cheapest deal in town.Rant done.
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Rant done.Well done . We have a place like that as you describe. Small , dirty , and even wrtten tickets if I remember right . Its 25 miles away so I dont stop by there very much. But Ive learned not to phone them as the information is worthless. They will XXX though and sometimes I can pick and choose although their patience runs short . They are normally glad when I pull out . The prices like you descibe are just as high if Im looking at good stuff which it may not be at all when I get a vizual. It used to go under a name of frieght damaged sales but they changed the name. They will take returns which is good . Ive bought quite a bit from them but I was there in person dragging a flat bed trailer. I once bought them out of white 3 tab roofing for a dickered price of a little less than half price, cash and carry -no return. The shingles were odd sized in depth and not length which made no differnce to me as I was bottom gaging . Some were end damaged which I used up in tabs and edge courseing plus starter tabs . They also stuck a little bit as they had been over stacked or they were old one or the other. All in all the savings were the same as the application labor, so it went down as a win. But I did have to haul them to the job site which I owned as rental property. So I went back several times more trying to get shingles but they never again had enough to do a house complete. I was afraid to start stocking partials because of color runs. That would have been too much for me to handle. Another time I bought a pick up load of ceramic tile and it had a 40 percent breakage in boxes which they covered with more time , but it took three more trips and I felt like I lost on that one . They would replace the boxes with more busted tile. I bought two bundles of 7/16s plywood that looked fine and I nearly gave full price for it . The ends were all mis cut out of square. I lost big time on that deal. Thats when I quit them. Tim
Dear Tim,I noticed in your post you wrote, " They will jew though ..." What does that mean?
R U pretending not to know that old idiom?The father oif the Jewish race, Abraham, had a visit from God who gave him some advance informatio0n about the upcoming destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Old Abe asked what if there are a few (20?) good souls left there? Surely you wouldn't destroy the whole joint for their sakes.God said naw, I wouldn'tAbram then proceeded to bargain with the Lordwell, then hiow 'bout for ten good hearted folks?etcThe process of bargaining the price down on anything has ever snce been refered to as Jewing a person down, re-inforced by the fact that they have a reputation for being somewhat close-handed with money.
One of the things that has ensured the survival of the race in spite of world-wide, nearly continual persecution, is the fact that they have learned to keep hard assets at the ready for flight to other places, similar to their Exodus from Egypt with Moses, when they carried some good stuff along with them.
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surely you must a better excuse for using language that is so bigoted and ignorant. frankly, i'm surprised to find it on a forum like this
There's nothing bigoted about it. it is just a fact of the language. it has a history and a meaning, that has nothing to do with any kind of negative feelings. Pretend all you want that it's different and that you are oh, so PC. It is what it is in spite of anyonme trying to pretend different.
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it has nothing to do with being politically correct and everything to do with perpetuating hatred and discrimination. how you choose to use language reflects your values and if you have twisted views of jews (or any other group), keep it to yourself.
You have no idea how much I favour the Jewish people or hopw much i have stood up for them, so keep your pre-judging to your self
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OK, glad that's cleared up. Is it ok to start using the "n" word, not in a bigotted way, but in a historical sense?
Mark
You use whatever words you want, and I'll do the same. You'll have to explain what the comparison is though if you want me to understand you. I don't see any parrallel.
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Hey guys - I want to forward this to the LL manager I dealt with to insure his best service! Don't turn the thread into a PC rant!
Forrest
OK, I'll confine myself to ranting against lousy LL service;)
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I hate PC !. Sorry, should have said I dislike PC , ALOT !
I have not yet used LL but there is a store near me that I am considering using. I stopped by once on a weekend morn (as was said before a really really really bad idea). Full of homemakers and other non-pros. It was a dark dirty dank wharehouse space-literally. The place apparently floods when it rains and the wood floor samples they had installed in the floor of their 'showroom' were all warped and dirty and nasty....super great impresion it did not make.
It seems like if you want something exotic like the pre-finished Brazilian Koa (their Bella Wood line) there is really no where else to go that would be cheaper. At least I have not found anything cheaper in the SF Bay area.Daniel Neuman
Oakland CA
Crazy Home Owner
It was a poor choice of words as some like you do take offense . I should have used barter or dicker but its just the ignorance comming through in me .
So for that you have my opology for it simply wasnt meant to offend but you did .
Tim
thanks for your apology
Thanks Mooney. You showed a lot of class in your retraction and no doubt gained respect.
Mark
as a longhaired redneck southern jew..... I'm not nor was i offended... first time i was behind a pickup with a "my boss is a jewish carpenter" I was think'n "who in the hell is a jewish carpenter around here besides me" Maybe in northern states you see jews in trades but not around not in 2 generations... grandpaw might have been...
now contractors... thats a different story... and only a few of those ever held a hammer... and chances are it wasn't his if he did... I think I endeared myself to many old jews because i was the kid that could weld, build, hunt, fish, trap or mechanic.... my fathers generation ....
when you work hard there is little reason to work out... around here you still have to ask... is that a matzo ball or a turnip
p
We had one open up nearby last year not to far from my usual flooring supply house.
I stopped by just to check them out and did find it low pressure. The big down side was the prices were crazy compared to what I was used to. The project at the time requited 5,000 sq ft of unfinished select red oak and the best price the LL folks could come up with was $.75/sq ft more than my supplier a half mile up the road. LL also wanted me to wait 2 weeks. Cherokee could set on my trailer the moment I showed up.
I've checked several other times and found their prices way out of line except for small 'odd lots' and those are best described as firewood.
Maybe different store have different prices. The one I stopped by had all the big box type low price adverts and the big box high prices.
I truly hope you have a better experience with LL than I did. As mentioned, expect special orders to be late. And expect to find second quality boards in the boxes. Anything from busted tongues to slight width variations (mine were off 1/16" frequently) to un-square end cuts.
Come back afgter you finish the install and let us know if you're still happy.
"When asked if you can do something, tell'em "Why certainly I can", then get busy and find a way to do it." T. Roosevelt
McDesign, I recently built a small house in upper Michigan. Most of the homes in Northern Michigan have that up-north rustic feeling. I went to Lumber Liquidators and purchased cabin grade (with knots) flooring. It came out beautiful and they have made me a customer for life. I know you, too, will have good results with their products. Good luck! Grayhawk
Isn't the cabin grade flooring unfinished? That would really help solve some of their problems, since variations in thickness would be resolved by sanding, which cannot be done with prefinished wood.
"When asked if you can do something, tell'em "Why certainly I can", then get busy and find a way to do it." T. Roosevelt
If cabin grade is all he expects, then LL will do just fine
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All of this political correctness that is being preached these days is more dangerous than discrimination. The PC police are preaching intolerance at every walk of life.
There was a time when we could all tell a good polish, italian, jewish etc. joke and everyone had a good laugh over it, even the named persusion. Now we teach our kids to jump down someones throat if there's a hint of a racial remark.
We're going in the wrong direction
I started going into LL about five years ago and have purchased laminate for two jobs, picked it up there and no problems. That said, there is something strange about the place and the people they hire. Never saw the same person twice but they all seem to have gone through some sort of " bad attitude training" seminar. Attitude , at a company always comes from the top down.
Okay, checking back in with my Lumber Liquidators experience.
Last week, they said they'd call around 10 next Friday morning. This morning, at 10:02, they call; tell me it's all in. I go at lunch, it all gets forked into my van in less than ten minutes. The flooring is Dura-something (floating snap-lock maple), every box is undamaged and the top boards are smooth as a baby's behind. It's all acclimating now; I 'll install it Tuesday.
Things look good so far . . .
Forrest
Just installed the maple floating floor from Lumber Liquidators. Every box of material was well finished. Two boxes had the bottom board in two pieces, with one end of each T&G.
My first time installing this type of product. Even with cutting four door casings (with my wonderful new Multimaster), 250 sq.ft. of MBR + 2 closets were done in about 3 hours.
A great experience in toto.
Forrest