ilana
laminate flooring
Answer from pro:
Ilana and READER, At the risk of people who read this response getting the wrong idea about Alliance's or my (Lehel Fabok, Owner) attitude (please read other 250 or so reviews for an overwhelming testimony of who we are), against Timea's (my wife) and against the advice of most "in the know" in the Marketing and Customer Relations business, I will address this review in detail. Not because it is a 7 (the original review of 0 (zero) was changed by the writer after we asked "why are you trying to ruin our reputation in such a vicious fashion" ?). Any and all Customers are entitled to their opinion and are encouraged to share it here or wherever they prefer. If we do a subpar job or provide no or hardly any service, by all means we deserve what's coming to us. Conversely, if we do well we also deserve a different result. However, I ask the reader to read on with an open mind and come to a conclusion at the end as I state the undisputable facts of this transaction and resulting personally (to me) degrading original reviews and ratings. Our Homestars listing and in fact our philosophy states that we do NOT have a minimum order value. People who come in for a $10 T moulding get the same service as a $10,000 Customer. No difference. To put things in perspective, the original purchase amount was $763.69 before tax (not $1,000). The visit started about a half hour before closing on November 12th and both Timea and Mike were on hand simultaneously providing help to select the right product, colour and price of laminate. Since this was going to be a "do it yourself" installation by a young lady who had never done anything like this before, Mike brought in material from the warehouse and gave a start to finish clinic on the Showroom floor on what to do when, and how and what to look out for, what tools and techniques to use, etc. We offered to lend her a carpet kicker at no charge to be able to refinish the carpet in the Hall at the doorway. Mike had to leave at 30 min PASSED closing time as he was already late for his hockey game (playing). As it turned out it was 45-50 minutes passed closing time when we were able to start attending to our closing procedures. We often, as our personal schedules allow, stay passed the official closing time as part of our Customer Service. Try that at most other places. In order to save the Customer the incoming freight cost we agreed to allow her to pick up the purchased material at Torlys as if she was from Alliance. On or about December 1st we received a call with further questions on installation advice to which Mike obliged with another 10 min session. No mention of the underlay issue at this point. Around December the 15th she ordered an installation toolkit through us and again went to Torlys to pick it up. There (we can only assume) she asked a warehouse employee about the underlay that she purchased from us (total value $55.10) (or perhaps they asked what she is doing for an underlay, we are not sure how it came about) and was told that the laminate (and not the "floor" as is stated in the previous version of the review) wouldn't be guaranteed by Torlys. This is simply not true and correct and we can prove it in writing from Torlys. However, she rushed off and purchased "approved" underlay somewhere else without even contacting us for comment or options or explanation. December 24th is when the next visit took place and the return of the underlay we sold was requested. I should state here, that our Return Policy that is at the bottom of our Invoice in not so fine print and is always read and signed by every Customer (present Customer no exception, we have a signed return policy Invoice, so she clearly must have understood the rules going in). The Policy states that return of merchandise ................ within 7 days of purchase for a 35% restocking charge ................, cut material not returnable. The statement that our underlay would have voided Torlys' warranty is simply incorrect. However, since it is a stock pad and as part of, again Customer Service, we offered to take it back even though it was 35 days PASSED our policy allowance (brownie point #1) but the restocking charge of $19,28 does apply. Most people would have been happy that they get something back they are not entitled to, but this wasn't good enough for this Customer. Our next offer was (once) that if she wrote a review for us here and on Google we would provide a full refund (brownie point #2). She left the underlay with us, agreed to write the reviews and left. The reviews were not written before in the middle of January she called to enquire about the refund. At this time she was reminded about our agreement and was offered the original 65% refund in lieu of the reviews. She decided instead to go ahead and write the above mentioned review here with a zero(0) rating and the minimum possible (1) on Google saying that we forced her to write them in order to get a refund even though she felt uncomfortable doing so. Despite the fact that she clearly had the choice of a partial refund without, she wrote reviews "period", so where is her refund she demanded in an email? After receiving a call from Timea and a short discussion she changed the ratings and the wording to what is currently readable on both sites and against my best judgement Timea gave her the full refund. Personally I feel hard done by. We did nothing wrong. We did nothing but service her to the tilt that she would never have received at 99.99% of other places for the size of her order vs. the amount of investment in time, after hours. I feel we deserved better. We (I am) are not perfect. No one is. I personally take full and uncompromising responsibility for everything we do. When I pay for a mistake one of our people makes I don't ask for compensation from anyone. When we do well I expect to be rewarded accordingly. Reader, PLEASE DRAW YOUR OWN CONCLUSIONS. Should you have any questions, I am available by all means possible with answers regarding this or any other relevant subject. While the golden rule is that "the customer is always right", he/she does not have the right to ruin the reputation of anyone or entity just because she can, especially without proveable cause. The feeling of entitlement over something does not make it to be a fact. But these day, who knows anymore. Even if one goes well beyond the norm one can still end up with negative results. Weird world. Still, Ilana thank you for the business you did provide us with. Lehel Fabok, Owner
Reply created 21 Feb 2015