Empire Today

DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME OR MONEY. Disgustingly unprofessional and frustrating from day one. A lack of communication led to the first crew leaving without telling us anything. The next day, we're told the floor has to acclimate so they can't do any work until the next day. After that, one guy shows up to start tearing up the floor (there were supposed to be 2 because there was large furniture to move). He finds a large crack in the concrete and says we have to get it filled before they can do the floor. We get the crack filled, and then one installer comes back and says he can't do the floor now because the concrete is not flat. We were told to fill the crack, not that it had to be flat. Why can't a business whose specialty is flooring handle something like grinding concrete? I would think that fixing a likely very common issue would be within the scope of a flooring installation. The installer upset me so badly that I had to ask him to leave. After this, I told Empire I was requesting a refund so I could hire another company that would actually do the work, including smoothing the concrete. I had to fight with them for almost a week before I finally got the refund. The second company not only smoothed the floor, but installed the floor and baseboards and moved all the large furniture in two days. It looks absolutely stunning. There is no reason a supposedly 'reputable' company like Empire couldn't have done just as good a job as this local company. Instead, they were too busy being uncommunicative, unprofessional, and just plain rude. Do not waste your time and money on this company, and hire literally anyone else.

Where do I begin…what a nightmare of a company to work for. I spend almost $15k for a job that the sales said would be 3 days. After over 3 weeks, the job is still not done. The installer was decent at first but them lied one after another. During the installation, he couldn’t do some of the things he was hired to do so I had to do them myself. Then found out they didn’t order enough replacement baseboard and when being remedied, the sales person said it would be on empire to cover the additional cost but I got a call 10 min later saying it would be another $500. The installer couldn’t do everything he was supposed to, put the toilets he removed on the carpet and got the water everywhere but didn’t say anything. Said the job was complete without it being done so I had to call and have another job opened up. Was told that the wrong part was ordered several times and still wasn’t in after 3 weeks until I called and FINALLY spoke with someone who said they have the piece and didn’t know what I was talking about. So ultimately it was a lie by the installer who just didn’t want to do his job. I kept trying to call to get the problem handled and install finished but took a week before I actually talked to someone to complain. The “customer service” rep was rude and didn’t care about anything but after complaining enough, they said they had the piece needed the entire time and opened another order, saying it was “covered by the warranty” when the job was never done in the first place. If you’ve read this far just know there’s even more that as of today, has not been resolved. The photo is one piece of what they claim to be “a completed job”. I’ll never do business with them again and would recommend any other company to work with. I’m even seeking legal action against them for violation of contract.

In AZ we purchased glue down flooring that should lay flat, even and smooth. Installed in January. Ever since install we have been calling to have boards fixed due to repetitive boards coming back up. We are told the installers are not installing properly. The installers says this is just what we will have with this floor. We paid a lot of money to have this ongoing issue. Customer service is horrible. They hang up on you. Managers do not call you back, no follow up. Rarely pick up their phone and make false promises of correction and excuses for the issue. Installers do not show up in professional attire like they advertise. They do not speak English so it’s hard to communicate with them. 7 months and still not resolution. I tried to make others aware on their Facebook and they blocked me from posting and removed my comment. Wishing we read the reviews prior to purchasing. The installer do not know how to install this type of flooring, the salesmen are pushing how great it is and the managers just don’t seem to care.

Empire said the workers would call first and arrive between 8 and 10 AM. Instead they never called and arrived late afternoon UNPREPARED TO DO THE TINY REPAIR JOB! Several calls to Empire went unanswered. Finally at 5:30 PM the job which should have taken two hours was completed. I WILL NEVER HIRE EMPIRE TODAY AGAIN FOR ANY PROJECT.

If I could give zero stars I would. We signed a contract because they said they could install the LVP on Wednesday 3/10. Then the sales person called to set it up after I paid the deposit (which by the way they charged more than they should have, more than the contract called for) and nope, can't do Wednesday, it will have to be Thursday. Ok, inconvenient because I work from home and the 1st room done was to be my office which we had emptied out. BTW they tell you arrival will be between 8am and 6 pm, that is all they can do. So Thursday at 1230 I finally get to speak to someone AFTER waiting 54 minutes on hold and nope, the crew didn't show up so it will have to be Friday 3/12. They said call after 1030 if the crew has not shown up by then and they can give you a better estimate of arrival. So after waiting a total of 2 hours and 5 minutes on hold, nope not on the schedule for today. I say why didn't some one call me?? This is crazy! Are you coming tomorrow, no can't come tomorrow maybe Monday. I ask for a supervisor, I'm told, "I am the manager' O ask so you don't have a boss? That is who I want to speak to, nope not available, ok have them call me, nothing but crickets, no call back, no reply to any of the voice messages I left nor any response to my emails to them. You cannot call anyone directly except your sales person who can only tell you she is sorry for the inconvenience! When you call the customer service or install department be prepared to wait. I have been 54th, 78th, 125th and 147th in line for a call back or to speak to someone! Absolutely horrible service!! So today, Monday we get a call that the carpet isn't in the warehouse yet so they can't install it today it will have to be tomorrow. Back on the phone trying to reach someone to help us straighten this out. Finally get a call and as soon as we answer they hang up. Call right back, back to the end of the line, 3 times this happened in one day. So finally get to talk to someone and explain that they need to install the LVP tomorrow, not the carpet. Nope, can't do that next available is 3/24 TWO full weeks after they promised it would be installed AND this is not for certain, might not happen in the 24th. I have NEVER had to deal with such dishonesty and incompetence. I am just trying to save someone else the frustration and disappointment we have had in dealing with Empire. BEWARE, no local #, no local office, the sales people will NOT help you, say they "can't" that they will get in trouble for giving you names or numbers of the managers. We never thought they could possibly be this bad, we were WRONG! ZERO stars would be too many for Empire!

I Thought I was getting top of the line mohawk laminate My salesman impressed upon me I was getting the best Laminate number one seller my price was $7000 for approximately 8 to 9000 ft.²My floors Sound hollow as if there’s air underneath them are not comfortable on your back when you’re walking in the house for a very long time they told me I should have gotten the “quiet walk” underlayment which would’ve made it more cushioned and no hollow sound my salesman told me I was getting “the best of everything”I didn’t even know there was a better quality underlayment $.15 difference he never offered it to me , when I was paying $7000 for Under 8000 ft.² they left me with 5 planks extra , Now I have two hallways that they didn’t recommend I do , and eventually I would’ve had to been done with the same product. I have reached out to the customer service several times to no prevail each contractor that comes out, Says there’s nothing wrong with the installment & there may be nothing wrong with the installment, one told me the floors maybe unlevel but then when he goes back they don’t tell them that, The other one told me they should’ve sold me the quiet walk and I wouldn’t have the problem I’m having they wanted to up charge me $4000 to change it out that would be $11,000 in laminate flooring for a living room a kitchen and two bathrooms & a hallway.

The flooring was of decent quality but Just floors (the company they hired to install the floors was terrible). They damaged a wall and broke a plantation blind

We recently had a horrible experience with this company, start to finish. Most of the issues arose from the sales department which I will refer to as the conman department. I will give the installers credit. I don’t like that they were subcontracted, and possibly in a position to be exploited by Empire and probably not paid very well but having to work long, hard hours. We were very happy with their professionalism and craftmanship. But, because of Empire’s sales and management, these workers were put in the middle of a train wreck. 1. The salesman who was in our home and did a thorough walk through and inventory (se he knew exactly what we had regarding structure and size of flooring/stairs and furniture) made several promises. We originally wanted to break up our tile, wood and carpet and have one done, then wait a bit and have the other done so on and so forth. The salesman said they could easily do tile in one day, wood the next and then the carpet in one day. We wanted to schedule March or April. Our baby’s one year birthday was on the weekend of March 3rd and we wanted to make sure we got everything done by then. The salesman said his March was booked but the weekend of Feb 24th was wide open and it would be no problem to get everything done in a 3 day span. Made it seem like there would be plenty of men on the crew to accomplish this. Not knowing anything about flooring, I took this conman at his word. In retrospect I now realize he was just trying to get a sale in quickly and get it all at once without us being able to change our mind about other sections of the house. It ended up taking 3 days for laminate, 3 days for tile and 1 day for carpet (and of course not finished by daughter’s bday party). Customer service said the best they could do was give us $100 off each service to compensate us for the 4 extra days of interrupted life and screwing up my daughter’s one year. 2. He also said it was Empire’s policy to not hit anyone with hidden charges, so what we were quoted at sales meeting is what we would be responsible for paying Empire. This turned out to be a lie. The laminate guy was not able to add laminate to our bottom step without sawing off and modifying a part of it. Thus, we were hit with a price increase that abolished half of the total amount we were supposed to be credited. Nothing we could do. 3. And he also supposedly built in our furniture moving into the contract. And the contract still to this day specifies furniture moving. However, as with tile (2 workers and their boss helped on last day) and laminate (one guy all by himself) the carpet installer showed up alone. His order did not specify furniture moving or the take up on the particle board ‘wood’ in one of the rooms to receive carpet. He had to hire another guy to come help him with that, but in the mean time my husband had to take off work to help move the furniture. I am pregnant with a high risk pregnancy and cannot move anything. At this point in time I was so stressed and upset I was having heart palpitations. We do not have the luxury on top of using our entire tax refund and then some to pay for the floors for my husband to take off and lose wages. I called Empire customer service again. Was told by first rep that the furniture moving had been ‘taken off’ the contract and we weren’t being charged for it. (again, our contract still specified moving it and we had not been asked to or given permission for changes). Then I spoke with his supervisor who told us that rep had given us misinformation and the furniture moving is on the contract still but doesn’t specify ‘large items’ (well, forgive me, but isn’t furniture usually large??). So they said they could not compensate for my husband’s lost wages but could discount the carpet an additional $100. Luckily that went through. The carpet got done, my husband took off work for a couple hours. Out of this we were discounted $400 but had to pay $150 extra for the stair, so got a discount of $250 for 4 extra days destroyed, a messed up milestone bday party, and lost wages. Although the men worked very hard and did great, we found a couple minor issues. One with laminate on a stair needing caps and then a little bit of grout in the living room mixed improperly. Empire has a warranty program for issues like that but rather than dealing with them again, we will work on making the fixes ourselves. That is how much I want to be done with this company forever. 4. Choose empire at your own risk. Don’t believe a word sales tells you. If they give you a time frame estimate, have that added to the contract. Have it added to the contract that you won’t get hit with hidden charges. If they claim that your payment for furniture move covers all furniture, have every item listed in the contract. Or….just don’t use Empire.

The salesperson and installation were very professional and arrived on time. The salesperson initially tried to sell polyester and other better alternatives, which I anticipated. After asking for better quality, we decided on going with Mohawk Triexta which comes with a phenomenal 25 year warranty on texture and stain resistance. I was provided a sales quote immediately after all the measurements and calculation was completed. After getting several estimates, they provided the best combination of quality product, online reviews, and competitive pricing, so decided to go with Empire. The installation team was on-time and their customer service always kept me in the loop with installation and scheduling. The work took almost 7 hours and they did a very professional job. I highly recommend Empire... but always recommend shopping around as well.

Crew was quick and professional and all work was done as expected.

I received 3 estimates for this project and their price was much lower than the other 2 so i was worried about the quality of the workmanship but both floors looks great.

They are very professional and very responsive to your needs.

The price was really good. It was better than everybody else's and they did an excellent job. The service was really nice. They came out, they brought the samples that I requested, they gave me a price, I took the price. They came out a couple of days later and installed it and did an excellent job of installing it. They also left there a big piece of extra carpet if they needed it. They did everything I asked them to do and they did it well. The carpet was installed properly. If you don't stretch it enough, it gets lumps in it and stuff. It has happened to me before but this seems to have been installed perfectly in a timely fashion.

The work was completed nicely except for the end where the laminate met the tile in the living room. They glued the end pieces very heavily and left glue smeared in those areas. They also did not bring the baseboards we chose and it took 2 weeks for them to install those. The salesperson we had in the beginning did not call us back after we we complained about the long delay. After having the flooring for 3 months, we noticed a large bubble had appeared underneath the laminate and we called Empire to come out and fix it. An employee came out and investigated it and told us they did not insert a spacer to allow the floor to expand and the whole floor had to be torn out and re-installed. We called the office to schedule an appointment for this to be done. The first and second appointment was cancelled because they couldn't get there that day. The third appointment was cancelled because the employee who came out to investigate the issue was not available (we requested him to come out) and the fourth appointment was cancelled because they did not have our baseboards to complete the job. The company has failed to reach out to us or even apologize, this has been a very bad customer service experience. We are very disappointed and frustrated in the handling of these issues. At this time, we don't even know when they will be out to re-install our flooring. It seems that they are 'overloaded' with work and not enough staff to meet the customer demand.

Salesman was ok. Not beyond super but ok. Installers were beyond horrible. BEYOND. Treated my home like a construction site. Broke pictures, furniture etc. Which by the way I paid appx. 650.00 for them to move. Knick knacks I had boxed up where moved as well.. Dropped and destroyed. Agreed upon install date was off by five days and when they did show up they had less than half of one rooms worth of flooring. Not returning for days afterwards to finish a job that should have taken a day or two and ended up taking five. So much more on this project... Saws 10 foot from the front door with the door left open for dust to come in.. My 15 yr old dog being let out the back yard and running off...displaced my disabled family. And more ... Absolute worst contract experience of my life. Long story short empire did refund 500.00 of the few . Big deal. ? now the floor in the bathroom is somehow got air under it and I do not want these same people in my home. Too uncomfortable having the same people in my home that made the experience miserable twice already. Stay away from this over priced company. Just a word of warning.

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It went very well. There was just one installer and he owned his own business. He was like contracted out to do work with them. He was very friendly and very knowledgeable. He worked very quickly and efficiently. They were able to negotiate the price because they initially came in much higher for the same product. I was able to negotiate the price down substantially. From the time we met with them until it was installed was probably like 2 weeks.

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Worst purchasing experience ever. 3 Workmen arrived @ 10:30a from Phoenix, unaware that they were supposed to move all furniture. They brought the wrong color carpet. By 1p, 2 workmen had disappeared, leaving 1 very slow workman to work on my house. Apparently the other 2 had another job in Tucson. At 2p the remaining workman asked me to drive him around the neighborhood to find the missing men, as they had been gone too long to find a McDonald's. (a 3and quot; drive.) The lost workman returned for 2h then vanished again @ 5p, leaving the same very slow workman. The workmen returned @ 8p fully expecting to finish the work in my house.....another 3-4h. I told them they had to leave and return tomorrow.
Phone calls to the Installation managers Joe Schwab and Mr.Kowalski resulted in patronizing supposedly soothing comments re: what nice boys these men were and and quot; how did the carpet look? Nice, huh, huh,huh?and quot;
The men returned the next day and finished the work. Quality of work; only fair. As I said, they brought the wrong color. My friend and I moved 80% of all the furniture. A wall mirror remains missing. I was advised by the salesman, to be present when the workmen arrived and when they left. In the interim, best if I disappeared. Are you CRAZY??? I would have been stolen blind.
I asked for a $500 discount, and got it. I should have asked for $1000.00
No one apoligized.

I had this company replace all flooring,except the 2 bathrooms in my 1800 square foot home. This included both tile and laminate flooring. Salesman,forman and workers were all great to work with . They kept areas clean. Very happy with choosing Empire Today. Floors are beautiful.

Admittedly, we didn't shop the price around because we honestly didn't have time. It seemed a bit spendy to me but after hearing feeback from some relatives that used other services I think it was inline with the competition. They came out within 24 hours of our first call and we had carpet 48 hours later. The selection seemed limited but we were happy with our final choice. The professionalism of the sales person was matched only by the professionalism of the installers! They were right on time, did everything they promised (moved the heavy furniture, cleaned up the floor after pulling the old pad, cleaned up after themselves and moved it all back) and they knocked it all out in a single day. We were very happy with Empire Today.

We had a very professional sales rep drive down from Phx to our area (Arizona City, AZ) with numerous samples to choose from. She spent nearly two hours going over details. We had contacted them because of their 50% discount as advertised on TV. We were rather shocked at the quote but decided to go ahead with the work. I called the office in Phx the next day to verify that the 50% discount had been allowed. The man I spoke to went over all the information and did reduce the price somewhat. He said he would enter everything in the computer and I thought this information would be available to anyone at the company who had access to it. He also said he would talk to the sales rep about it. They had scheduled the laminate (only about 4 square feet) to be installed on a Tuesday and then the carpeting would be installed the next day. We had packed up the small items - books, pictures, breakables - and stored them in the bathrooms, dining room and our van on Monday.







Tuesday came and the installer called advising he was tied up on another job in Tuscon and would be delayed until around 4 PM. Then around 6:00 he called again and said he couldn't make it until 8 PM. We told him not to worry about it and to just come up the next day early (Wednesday). He agreed but he never came. I finally called him around 5 PM and he said he had gone to another job in the valley and suggested we just contact the company to schedule another appointment.







In the meantime, I had received a call from Empire, (as well as numerous emails) to confirm the appointment for the carpet installation. The woman went over the order details and she did not have the updated pricing that I had been given on Monday by the man I spoke to at the office. In fact, I had two other phone calls and none of them had the revised pricing information. I was beginning to wonder if there was any communication between the departments. Anyway, the two young men came with the carpeting. They had us come out to the truck to inspect the product before bringing it in. My husband and I were very disappointed with the carpet - the colors did not match or the quality. It did not seem to look anything like what we had originally ordered the previous Saturday. So, they took it back to Phx.







On Thursday, I called them again and I spoke to the Installation Manager. I told him what had happened and that I wanted to get in touch with the sales rep we had spoken to on Saturday. He tried to call her but could not reach her so he told me he would leave a message for her to call us. We never heard from her all day so I finally called her around 4PM that day. She told me she had not gotten any messages from him. I told her we wanted her to bring the samples back out to look at and she scheduled an appointment for Friday afternoon.







She came back out and we decided to have the entire house done in the same carpeting (not two different types as originally ordered) and we also decided to order tile instead of the laminate. She placed the order late Friday and said she would try to schedule the installation for Saturday. I did mention that I had contacted a man on Monday about the original quote and that was the first she had heard about it. The man hadn't even spoken to her about it.







Saturday, I received a call from Empire around 7:00 a.m. They had our order in and said the installers would be at our home by 9:00. Our sales rep said the tile should be laid at least one day before the carpet to allow it to set properly. I asked the lady about that but she said that would normally be the case but they were going to do it all in one day.(?). The carpet installers came at 9:00 a.m. and the tile installer came around 9:45. They were all very professional and everything was completed within 6 hours.







After going through all of this back and forth stuff, we are happy with the product. I just feel that the office communication has much to be desired. Even though they told me they serviced our area, I felt it was inconvenient for them. I was not comfortable in the way the company did not support their sales rep and didn't even keep her in the loop when things were unraveling.

The install crew is hispanic with limited english skills, but they arrived on time and made efforts to correct a couple of issues. They will do COD to include check or c/c which I recommend in case you have issues and are not satisfied. I paid after all concerns were taken care of. The install took place two days after I ordered, which is very quick. They have a factory out of CA, so the install can be done quickly. Salesman was Jim and he was on time and measured the house. They will compete with home depot and lowes on price. Selection of carpet was somewhat limited, but they may have more samples if pressed. So bottom line is if you want a quick install go with Empire. Home Depot takes about 2 to 3 weeks for them to special order and install. Overall I was pleased with the experience and I would recommend them.