Stone-Mart Travertine

I’m extremely disappointed in my experience with Stone mart and Travertine warehouse. In my family company experience of over 30 years in real estate investments in Tampa and Miami I have never experienced such unprofessional behavior and chaos. I was originally working with who I thought was the manager, Jay. I was in contact with him for about 2 weeks. I also worked with a guy named Josh who was very professional and helpful throughout the process. He took me through the stone yard and showed me the colors and crates. Jay told me I could hand select my crates with Josh because they are going in MY home not in an investment property. I am very particular about the color I’m receiving because I have a grey home and wanted to try to pick out more of the lighter toned crates in the silver category. Me and Jay emailed back and forth a few times to settle on a price for 2100sqft of travertine pavers. I signed the agreement and sent back the document. Here’s where it starts getting weird.. Jay called me the day before I was supposed to pick my crates and told me to no longer call or text Josh because he moved to a different division and to keep it all through Jay. I reschedule to come pick my crates because he cancelled on me the day I was supposed to come. On my way to the store I get a call from Stone Mart saying they are delivering my crates tomorrow? This was never discussed with me and I pushed a few days because my contractor was still weeks away from starting. I show up to the stone yard to pick the crates as promised and Jay says he’s busy and Josh will actually be meeting with me. I’m confused because I was told I wasn’t going to be dealing with josh anymore. I wait 30 mins then 40 mins and now an hour passes by. I get told to come into the show room. I show up to meet with Jay and now I’m dealing with another guy named Dave. Dave introduces himself very cold, unapologetic for the confusion and acting as if we were in the wrong. He informs me that Jay resigned about 5 mins ago and that he is the manager now. He isn’t on any of my documents and no one knows who he is when I call stone mart and this entire experience has been CHAOS. I have been working with him for 3 days now and he won’t fulfill the promise I was made to pick my crates. I tried calling to speak with him and instead of listening to me as a paying customer he is loudly speaking over my every word. Basically just telling me oh we can’t help you, that was a promise made by Jay and we don’t allow that. He is telling me to basically trust them and their judgement after this entire unprofessional unorganized process I have been put through? He says he will take photos of the crates they picked out for me and sent me far away photos which are no help when it comes to color referencing. This was no help at all. Not to mention this entire situation with every sales rep except for Josh has been a nightmare. I went to stone mart to visit initially before dealing with any of the above reps and the sales reps in the show room were just as rude and not helpful at all. I’m not sure if they are fighting with each other for commission over the sale but they lost a customer who could have been returning. I do not recommend this company and will never use them again. I’m tempted to cancel my entire order at this point and go elsewhere.

I had no problems working with Patrick, but one visit I had to work with Loretta Ducas and it was awful. Loretta was rude, initially ignored me, and refused to help me figure out how many tiles I needed. She was supposed to be helping me, but then helped another customer and took 2 phone calls. She said to me, ?How am I supposed to know how many tiles you need? Don?t you have a contractor?? After I said that Stone Mart should be able to help me figure this out, she said ?I?m not going to take the responsibility of that if I do the math wrong.? So I had to figure it out myself. I also called to see what grout color matched the travertine I bought and Loretta told me ?And how am I supposed to know that answer?? with a rude, snotty tone. She was useless and rude.



The hard part was finding a competent, skilled, and affordable installer. Stone Mart suggested a poor quality installer, Seven Golden Floors. It?s great for Stone Mart business when they suggest a crap installer and then you have to buy additional tile when your project needs to be redone. My advice to future tile customers is to get porcelain tile and forget about stone. It's not worth it. It takes great skill and experience to install stone correctly (especially in a shower) and with quality. Stone is also high maintenance and chips and cracks SO easily. I'm always seeing new chips and wondering, "How the? What the?" I'm so delicate with it and yet still it chips. You have to seal it every 5 years and it?s difficult to clean. After living with it for half a year now, I would never do stone again. Porcelain tile is stronger than ceramic and more durable than stone. That is the way I will go in the future. Stone looks good, but it is not functional or durable when you live with it.

The Leonardo Travertine that was delivered had a few problems - some pieces were not square, about 50% had chipped edges (some on face (top) of the travertine, some on the underside (or bottom) of the travertine.
However, one of their sales representatives came out to look at what I had complained about and said that and quot;Sometimes their saws will slip when they are cutting the travertine, so I should expect to find some pieces like that.and quot; He also said that most of the tiles had chipped edges on the underneath edge and that would not be counted as a chipped tile as the chips had to be on the face of the travertine for it to be considered a defect.
The sales manager who did review the pieces in question said that he would be prepared to replace 10-12 pieces, but that was all that he was prepared to do about the issue. He said that's probably about the best that anyone could hope for under the circumstances.
He also said that according to the sales contract I signed that up to 7% imperfections/breakage was allowable and that the main store manager and quot;wouldn't even bother to address such an issue.and quot;
The entire exchange was witnessed by the tile layers from Aand E Tile corporation who was hired to install the Travertine from Stone Mart. It was the Aand E Tile owner who informed me that at the price I paid for the Leonardo Travertine, I should have gotten perfect pieces because these tiles that were delivered would not be considered Premium Travertine pieces and I paid a Premium Price for them. $6500 for 1500 square feet of Leonardo Travertine.
Other people have invited me into their homes where they have had Travertine delivered through other vendors and they didn't have such complaints against these other companies.
I don't hate the Leonardo Travertine, but had I known the tile was going to be like this, i would have chosen to go with a vendor that my friends had used, which would have saved me a considerable amount of money.
In fact, when it came time to install the backsplash in my kitchen, I did not buy it from Stone Mart, but went elsewhere.

Crystal was awesome to work with. She really worked with us on pricing and helped pick out colors and designs. I highly recommend asking for her when you go there. They delivered our product right on time and zero hassle.

The selection of travertine at Stone-Mart is truly incredible! We were first looking to remodel an upstairs bathroom, and our sales rep, Zeena Hanna, was extremely patient and knowledgable in working with us to select the right color, pattern and material. The Leonardo travertine we selected is only found in one quarry in Turkey and is exclusive to Stone-Mart. The colors and patterns make for a striking dislplay on the walls in our shower, and we were so pleased we also used it in a different pattern on the floor. While Stone-Mart does not sell granite, they are connected with a nearby granite wholesaler, and again, Zeena Hanna went out of her way to coordinate delivery of the granite to Stone-Mart and took care of the billing so we had only one bill to work with. Zenna kept us informed on practically a daily basis as the materials were prepared, took care of coordinating with the granite company and our contractor for delivery of the granite and travertine, coordinated with the granite company for measurement and pre-install requirements and made sure that we were completely satisfied.
We were so pleased with the finished bathroom that we decided to use the Leonardo travertine on our front walkway and porch to cover over some drab and unappealing concrete. Again, Zeena Hanna came to our rescue by providing us with three companies we could choose from to perform the labor. Once we selected the contractor, Zeena again made the entire process painless by coordinating with the contractor to pick up the materials and followed through until the work was completed.installation

When we first contacted Stone Mart, we looked around their showroom and enjoyed the displays that they had. We were initially too quick to put down a deposit on a floor, when we chose the Cappuccino, select grade. We made a payment that day since we were informed that we may not be able to reserve the tiles, and we might have to wait for a shipment to replenish their stock before we could get ours delivered. We were anxious to get the project started. When we took the sample home and compared it with our other choices for our renovation, we decided that it was too busy to go with our granite counters. Since we felt that we were locked in to Stone Mart, we then chose to go with a lighter color, the Ephesus Beige Classic. We were informed that this selection was more expensive, but it would be sold to us at the same price. Unfortunately, the reason we chose the Classic, was because the and quot;Select Ephesusand quot; that was displayed appeared whitish and grey, while we wished to have some tan or beige colors included. We received our shipment which included three pallets and a few more tiles, 1200 square feet.
We waited to get a recommendation about an installer to do the work. As we found out, Stone Mart would only give our names to the installation companies, and we would have to wait to hear from them. After not hearing from any of them, we contacted our salesman who finally relented and gave us three names, and their contact information. He told us that this was not their usual procedure, but we insisted. After interviewing all three recommendations, we chose the one we preferred.
We noticed that when the installer started to put down the tiles, that some were oddly colored, and we told the installer to try to hide them under the cabinets. Since we were replacing all of our cabinets, we had plenty of room for hiding. Some looked like they were stained (which is a natural occurrence), some had features we just didn't like, and some were actually stained (a slight yellowing along the edge of the tile). The variation that we had in this and quot;Classic Marbleand quot; was extreme to the point that we asked the installers to lay them transitioning from light to dark, to mix them up, and even use the and quot;darkand quot; ones in a closet, or another room.
When he opened the final pallet, our installer informed us that many of the tiles were chipped on the top corner edges, or outright broken. It appeared that they had been damaged in delivery, or while stored at the warehouse. We contacted the salesman about the problem on Saturday, and sent him pictures of the pallet and the chipped tiles. He told the owner about the problem. The installers were able install some of the chipped tiles where they wouldn't be seen, under the cabinets, or use them for cutting smaller pieces. On Tuesday, we were still waiting to have some replacement tiles sent out when the salesman
called at 12:39 PM. He said that the owner wanted to send a and quot;sales repand quot; to inspect the tiles. At this point, our installers were almost out of material to put down. The representative arrived Tuesday, after the installers had gone home, and inspected the problem. We were able to pick up the replacements later the next day. Stone Mart did replace 60 of the tiles (135 sq. ft.).
After the installation we noticed that the polishing on some of the tiles was incomplete. There are saw gouges and imperfections that are evident in a few places. Unfortunately, these tiles were not put under cabinets where they wouldn't be seen. Some actually ended up in the middle of the kitchen and several places where they are in plain sight. If we had caught them before they were installed, Stone Mart probably would have replaced these as well.
If we had a chance to do it over we would at least chose and quot;selectand quot; marble. Everything included, this 1025 square foot floor cost us $11,915.25, or $11.62 per square foot, which is close to a median price for this area, according to homewyse.com.

We bought the papers and then basically the next week we decided on marble and then 10 days later, they are done. They have a good selection and they had the availability of the marble. They get it directly from their source in Turkey and that was good. They did a god job of explaining about how they cut it a different shapes and things like that. They were good.

We had been debating between ceramic and travertine flooring for our new home and visited a number of vendors in doing our research. We visited the Stonemart showroom and came across Patrick E. He patiently took the time to explain the advantages and disadvantages of both types of flooring. After deciding on the stone and explaining to Patrick the basic style and general color we were looking for he showed us a number of samples that he thought were suitable and suggested an appropriate pattern given the layout of the house. This was all done without pressure and without pushing us toward the highest priced or highest margin stone. Calls were always returned promptly and his follow up was excellent. After deciding on the right stone it was delivered on the date and time committed to. As an added bonus the person he recommended to do the work was fantastic.