City Carpet Outlet

This is the second time this business has scheduled flooring appointments in our home and then cancel/change the day of installation. The last time in another room, it took them 3 weeks and 4 install times before they finally showed up. Today they were scheduled to finish the next 2 large rooms and cancelled 1 hour before showing up. I took a vacation day today for nothing except to hear now on Monday.

called them a couple of times from mid-June to mid-July regarding the carpet and linoleum issues that City Carpet installed in April, 2019. City Carpet was to set up a time to correct the problems. They never called. *** gave me the information to call them myself. On 7/25/19 @ 4 PM, I stopped in and was told Scott would called me the next day. This did not happen. I stopped in 8/2/19 and an appointment was set up for 8/13/19 in the AM. I called at 2 PM 8/13/19 to find out where the installer was. The scheduler was to let me know in 1 hour. He didn't, so I called him at 4PM. The repairs were rescheduled for 8/27/19 and he would call me with the time. 8/27/19, never heard from anyone so I called in again and was told no one would make it with a number of excuses on why no one could make it that day. My statement to him was maybe they should put a hold on selling carpet until they catch up on their installations. He switched me to Diane to reset up an appointment. She set it up as a "MUST" for 9/10/19 AM and I was to call and check for the time. I called at 9:30 and Diane wasn't there yet. Called again at 12:10 and Diane indicated the installer set up for me was in Warsaw doing an install on 4 units and he wouldn't be able to get to me. The appointment was reset up for 9/13/19 in the AM. Will they have another excuse again?

Our experience with City Carpet Outlet has been, at the least, a complete disappointment and, at the most, a traumatic experience that turned our lives upside down for the better part of a week. The story is so long and so full of poor customer service and shady business practices that I feel it best to use bullet points. I want to preface the explanation of the experience by stating the fact that Mark (salesperson) and City Carpet Outlet were referred to us by a very good friend. This made us question our own initial impressions as things first started to seem odd or wrong and also put us in an awkward position with someone we know and trust. Here are our negative experiences in chronological order:

- The salesperson's (Mark's) verbal quote of $2000 for our job (if I did the prep and finish work) was for 560 sq. ft. of flooring (by my estimate). When he came on site and measured, the actual square footage was only 476 and the overall price did not change at all. My wife was the one present, so I could not question this at the time. Also, we were still in the mode of this being a trusted professional recommended by a close friend.

- The salesperson (Mark) billed us 90% down, which was the second red flag in a short timespan. But, we don't buy flooring every day and this was a "trusted" source, so we paid the 90% down.

- We were told that our installation would begin either on Tuesday, June 18th or Wednesday, June 19th at the latest and would take 2 days, for a completion date of Thursday, June 20 at the latest. We planned our entire move around this schedule. We ended our lease at the home we were renting and rented a moving truck for Wednesday at 4pm, thinking we would move our belongings into all of the areas that were not currently having new vinyl plank flooring installed. June 18th came and went with no installers and no call. So we called in during the afternoon just to make sure that the installers would arrive Wednesday morning. We were told that they would be there no later than 10:00am. Wednesday, 10:00am comes and, again, no show, no call. We called in to check on our job and were told that Mark was off that day. Nobody knew the status of our job, but 2 different salespeople took our number and promised to call back with info after they investigated. Neither one ever called back. That prompted the first request to speak to the manager, who was "with another customer." We were told the manager would call and they never did. That prompted a call to Mark's personal cell phone. I apologized for bothering him on his day off, but let him know that I had no other choice. We were then informed that the installer would not arrive until Thursday, June 20th (this was the latest day that the floor was to be completed). That was the first time we were told that our floor would not be finished according to the promised timeline.

- During Mark's initial on-site visit to our home, he had informed my wife that, if I was not able to complete the leveling of our existing tile floor, the installers could do it for "right around $100." Due to the chaos with our move, we called Mark and let him know that we had completed the wood subfloor installation over our existing wood floor, but that we would need the installers to finish leveling our existing tile floor. We decided that the additional $100 or so was worth it to not have to hassle with leveling the floor during our move. When the installer finally arrived late Thursday morning, he told me that the salesperson had quoted the leveling wrong and that I needed to talk to Mark before he could do any work. I called Mark and he then told me that it would actually be $500 to level the floor instead of the $100 he quoted. I reluctantly agreed to the additional $500 because the installer was standing there waiting on a decision before he would do any work. At this point, we were in desperate need for this job to be finished. We were without a bathroom (only one in the house), without a kitchen and without a place to stay. The situation was BAD. I called into the main office and asked a second time to speak to a manager and was told one would call me right away. Nobody ever called.

- Upon agreeing to pay the additional $500 (I was told it was at "their cost" and they weren't making any money on it) for leveling the floor, I informed the installer that everything was ok and he could star the installation. At that point, he contact his office and they determined that Mark's quote was wrong once again. The installer told me that Mark had calculated 3 bags of leveler for the job and that it would actually need 9 bags and that the actual additional cost would be more like $960. At this point, under the stress of the move and the manipulation by this company, I lost it. I called Mark and told him that the additional cost was between him and his manager and that I would not be paying it. He told me that the manager may decide to leave the job site then. I welcomed him to do that and responded that we would be taking them to court and blasting them with negative reviews on social media. Mark talked to the manager, supposedly, and got everything calmed down and I then agreed to $540 in additional cost so that the job could finally get started on the afternoon of Thursday, June 20th. All that got done the first day was priming the floor for the leveler and the installer left. I called in to the main office and asked to speak to a manager immediately and they would not give me one. They only told me the manager would call and they never did. Completely, unbelievably terrible customer service.

- Due to the fact that we had new appliances delivered on Thursday, June 20th and had no way of installing them in the kitchen, we had them left in boxes in the garage. I told Mark that, because of their delays, we could not have our kitchen appliances installed as planned. At that time, he said that he would have them installed even if he had to pay his own men to do it. I installed our kitchen appliances by myself a week later. Mark never followed through on the promise and I planned to withhold the final 10% of the bill to pay Lowe's to install our appliances. Mark and his company could no longer be trusted for anything.

- The job was finally finished on Monday, June 24th. They refused to send anyone out on Saturday to work, even though we had no bathroom, no kitchen, no place to stay and all of our belongings we stuffed in our bedrooms. We had to go back to our landlord where we previously live and we asked to stay longer if we paid him. He kindly agreed. We had to pay rent and utilities for those extra days.

- The last offense came at the end of the job when City Carpet Outlet billed the entire remaining balance without us signing off on the job. Mark texted me on June 24th and asked if we could give the installers a check for the balance. I informed him that I would pay the $540 for the additional installation, but that I would not pay the final $230.87 until our appliances were installed. That was the last I ever heard from Mark. We were never asked if the job was done to our satisfaction. The sign-off sheets were intentionally left blank by us because we were not happy and had only the final 10% of the job as leverage to resolve our issues.

At the end of this nightmare of a business transaction, these are the damages that we have:

- We had to rent our former house (with no furnishings because they were all in our new house) for 4 additional days and pay utilities. This cost us about $135.

- We had to rent a moving truck for an extra day because we couldn't put our things where they needed to go. All available rooms and garage were full. This cost us $72.

- We had to install our appliances ourselves because the flooring was not ready and we couldn't get Lowe's to come back out when we needed them. $175+ value.

- in addition to this roughly $382 of additional unnecessary expense/ inconvenience, our lives were in complete chaos for a week. We had everything crammed into places that they weren't supposed to go because our floors weren't finished. We had no restroom at our new house. We had significant emotional distress.

We feel as though this entire situation was way more painful than it needed to be. If only City Carpet Outlet had cared at all or shown one iota of concern for the situation that they put us through or had made any attempt at all to reach out or to rectify things, it would have gone a long way.

Instead, we were billed above what was estimated without our consent and our requests for interaction/ response went totally ignored. This will go down as the worst interaction I have had with any company...ever.

We purchased carpeting for our main floor a few months before we got carpeting for our finished basement. The salesman, by the name of Mark, came out to our house and took measurements. When the installers came the first time, they did not speak English and my son found one of the men in a room that he had no right to be in. When we asked questions, they did not understand what we were trying to say. When we made arrangements for the the finished basement to be carpeted, we requested different installers, so we would be able to communicate with them. The carpet was back-ordered and was installed a few days before Christmas 2017. While the men were installing the carpet, they noticed that Mark had taken the wrong measurements for the room and they were going to end up short on one side. One of the men was going to make a seam through a major walkway and I requested that they refrain from putting it there, due to the traffic flow. They ended up filling in the mis-measured area with a cut-off of the leftover rug. This area was over 12 inches in width and approximately 10 foot in length. We have Mexican tile around our kitchen, but the installers were confident they could lay the carpet and make it look good. Upon trying to vacuum near the tile area the next day, the carpet would catch, unravel and clog the vacuum. I found a small piece of carpet that they had stuck in a gap, not glued down and just sitting there, covering the gap by the tile. We notified Mark that we were having problems with the carpet and the installation. We had also noticed that the upstairs carpet had major seams and a bump that were very noticeable and let him know this as well. He sent two men out to assess the problems and try to fix them. They stretched the carpet to take the bump out, (the bump came back a couple weeks later). To fix the seam, they took a combing tool and just combed the carpet. This did not solve the problem. They then came downstairs and were unable to do any repair. Months later, my husband and I went back into the store and tried to explain our situation. Mark wasn't available, but there were a couple of other men there. As I was explaining, one of the men said, "We'll have the store manager call you." They have never contacted us.

My wife and I visited City Carpet in Fort Wayne, IN with a scaled drawing of our floor plan of the to-be carpeted area. Salesman quoted the price with an area of 666sqft. We put 1/2 the money down and the salesman came out to our residence and spent literally 5-10 minutes (documented) at our residence. He then called my wife and said that additional carpet would be needed due to a set of steps, and the floor would need a seam. Michelle and I returned to the store and paid an additional $391.70 for the additional carpet. I was home when the carpet was installed, and the installer informed me that he could install the carpet without the seam. He called the store manager, and was told to credit us back for the carpet that we did not use.

The store did not contact us regarding the credit (after 2-days) so I stopped in and talked to the salesman. He informed me that the installer returned a 5x12 piece of carpet and material and labor refund would be $221.50. I asked how that could be since we did not need the seam, and I would expect to get a credit for $391.70. He informed me that the carpet piece was 5x12 and that was the refund amount.

I noticed that the salesman had a roughly sketched out drawing on a blue copy of a proposal. The square footage was over 700 square feet, and he said that this was what his measurements came up to. We were not given a copy of the "blue proposal" with the drawing/footage on it and I disagree with additional 76 square feet of carpet that he is coming up with. I asked for a copy of the proposal he had and he wouldn't give my one. I work as an estimator in Mechanical Contracting, and know how to scale a room. I spent 30" doing this, and my wife said he took two measurements and left.

I also tried to call the manager of the store, he was not available and I left my name and phone number. Instead of a call back from the manager, the salesman called me back. I want the additional money ($170.00) owed to me, and I would be glad to have anyone from City Carpet come and remeasure my floor to confirm who's measurements are right.

Promised date for warranty service on carpet has not been met. Promised dates for the past 5 working days and work has not been done.
Made appt. for 12/5 for the company to fix the carpet as the seams are showing in a couple places. The carpet was purchased on 6/22/16. At around 5:00 pm I called the office because they had not shown up. I was told they were in LaGrange at this time (1.5 hours away). I spoke with Mike and he assured me they would be there the following day and I would hear from them as to the time. When I had not received a call I again called the office and was told by Mike that they would be there around 3-4. At 5:15 Mike called me and I indicated that no one had shown up. He said he would check and call me back. I did not receive a call that day. The following day (12/7) My husband called the office and Mike told him he would check and call back in an hour or so. No call was received that day. At 5 pm a message was left by the installer asking us to call him. We were gone that evening so I again called the office on Friday. At around 3:30 I was told that the installers were in Churubusco finishing a job and they would be at my house after. At 6:20 pm the installer called and said they were just leaving Columbia City and would be there shortly. Installers arrived at 6:40 pm and told me the repair would take around 2 hours and they could not do it now. I asked what time on Monday they would be there and was told that when they spoke with the owner first thing on Monday he would probably send them right over. Today, Monday, Dec 11. at around 10:30 I again called the office and asked to speak to the owner. I was placed in voice mail and I left a message. I received a call from Eleanor (not sure of her name) and explained my issue and told her I wanted the carpet fixed today. She said they were busy today and asked me when I wanted another appt. I told her I wanted it TODAY. The discussion became heated and eventually she hung up on us. My husband again called the office and left a voice message for the owner telling him he was leaving us no option other than suing. We have not heard back from the business.

Purchased carpet from City Carpet Outlet carpet installation today. Took day off work received phone call can't install today too far behind
Purchased carpet from City Carpet Outlet told by saleesman would receive a phone call this morning at 8:00 am about install time.No phone call called company at 9:00 "don't know who told you that but we don't even schedule til between 9 and 10. Talked to manager who told me they were running behind because they had to go and finish a job from yesterday first. Not my problem! Then told me carpet would be installed between 1,2,or 3 it is now 2:45 just received phone call that they are running behind and cannot install our carpet after all. We are having carpeting installed in all bedrooms and the house is tore up. This is the second time we have purchased from them the first time install was no problem this time manager at the store just acted like they really didn't care and it wasn't their problem, won't be using them again!!!