Empire Today

Beautiful work!

They were fast, and efficient and on time.

Purchased Carpet on 8/26 with an install of 8/31 recived an automated call at 7:30am the morning of the install and said we would done in the afternoon that the installer had a previous job in the morning. We didn't hear anything until 2pm on the 31st when the installer called and said he will be there between 3:30 and 4:30PM. He arrived just after 4:30pm and it took him till 7:30pm to complete the job and he rushed through it, he was exhausted. This is the 2nd time we have used Empire and the previous time we went through the same exact experience. I called the company to discuss the issue with the general manager and he basically said "Not everyone can be first and if the installer arrived before 6pm that still is satisfactory to him... Umm? The work looks nice I stayed on top of job to ensure it was done correctly vs. the last time we used them and it was not done correctly.

It is a disaster. It is 2 years old and peeling at every seam. Empire refuses to stand by their "lifetime" warranty. It looks horrible. Never do business with these con men.

During the sales process I was urged to "simply" put a deposit down to hold my order. The sales rep knew we were looking at another vendor today. But I went ahead and signed the agreements knowing I had three business days to cancel. I started calling the cancellation department at 5 pm. It's now 537 and I've been on hold twice, hung up on once and a chat conversation with customer service got me nowhere. A call to my local sales rep resulted in him telling me I had to call customer service. So here I am again. I was worried this would be the kind of support I would receive from a national brand. I should have followed my gut and simply waited. DO NOT order any product if you are on the fence and expect to easily cancel your order. Or make sure your phone battery is charged so you can listen to hold music for an hour.

Good. No complaints.

I have used Empire Today in the past, so I was expecting a similar, good experience. I was WRONG. The sales guy came out to my house (on time) - and took some basic measurements, and gave me a quote. I told him I was interested in working with a company that can accommodate a later evening or weekend appointments option. "no problem, the installer can do weekend appointments". Great! After getting my other quotes, I decided to go with Empire. Phoned back and the sales guy said he had to come back to my house....uhgg - another appointment. Fine - he came back and we got all the paperwork order set up - again I said, I will need the weekend appointment option, "no problem" he said. Then he said, you will be contacted soon to set up the appointment, then it takes a 3/4 days to make, then they schedule another appointment to install. Ok, great I said, so I could have these by the end of March? "Yes" he said. Days later when I had not been contacted by the installer, I reached out to Empire - they said someone should be ringing me soon, another day later, I got in touch with the local installer, and asked for a weekend appointment. HA! They don't do weekends.... Sorry what? I realize it is not the installers fault - my sales person lied to me. (I emailed Empire customer service at this point with this issue and how I was really mislead by my sales person, only to get a canned email about how they will get back to me - which they didn't) I was really upset - how was I going to get my blinds? The installers were nice enough to schedule a later evening appointment, which 2 of them showed up for on time, and were very nice. He did all the measuring, and made an order adjustment I was trying to make unsuccessfully with Empire directly. He said it should be 7-ish business days (again, not his fault my sales person told me a TOTAL LIE about 3/4 days) - so I wait. Almost 3 weeks later, I ring the installer to get an update...and got the run around about them not being in yet. She said she would ring me the next day with a follow up - Nope...she didn't. I had to ring back (irritated at this point about the entire process so far with trying to get some blinds) - she said she didn't know when they would be in, and needed to talk to her installer and ring me back. I followed up again with Empire (email again because I don't have the time to spend 30min on the phone trying to get someone to talk to) - to complain about this process, and how I still don't have my blinds. I get a call this morning from a guy at Empire telling me the installers are no longer affiliated with Empire, and they don't know when my blinds will be in or be able to be installed, and they will either give me my money back or a $200 credit to wait. I said wait how long? He said there was no way he could say....really? He was a very irritating guy without any actual answers, information nor did he actually care about my experience. I got my money back (or so I am told...hasn't happened yet). Please be very aware and careful before using Empire Today for anything. I was lied to and dismissed, for expecting honest service and good product for my money. I have wasted a lot of time I didn't have - please consider my experience and let it save you your time.

Looks great and good pricing installed before the holidays on a weekend

If you want to pay more for convenience that ends up being way less convenient or if you want to repair drywall, replace almost every outlet you have, clean up standing water off of furniture, cups out of landscaping and oil spills off your driveway only to have huge visible seams in the carpet in the middle of rooms then you found your place. If you want to pay a large amount of money, take a second day off work to have the same installers come out and make it way worse and then tell you that this carpet never looks good, then you found your place. Want installers that hide shoddy work by placing furniture in front of/ over everything they destroyed? This is the place for you. You want to deal with smarmy sales tactics that even used car retailers abandoned (let me call my manager and see if I can get away with this super deal) then again, you found your place.

The experience has been good. They have been quick to get the work done when I needed it done and did a good job with it. I've been happy with their work. We were trying to match the carpet in one room with the rest of the house. They did pretty good job with that.

DO NOT buy flooring from Empire Today. We replaced our kitchen floor in December 2014 and already are replacing it. They blamed me, Tom and our dogs, and placed no blame on the inferior flooring they recommended and laid. DO NOT BUY FLOORING FROM EMPIRE TODAY. They don't honor warranties. As a solution, Empire offered to replace their original CRAP floor at 25% off the original cost. So, if I pay them another $3000+, they will replace their original CRAP floor with the same flooring which they claim our lifestyle damaged.

Great. Price was right, they were on time, job done quickly and well.

Seemed to go well at first. We had empire out to quote the purchase and installation of 550 sq. ft. of Shaw laminate. We needed the Chinese Lumber liquidators removed due to formaldehyde issues. The bid came in high, but we were convinced by the sales rep that we were choosing safe, reliable, American made product. We were not sure about having laminate installed in our kitchen and dining area, but the sales rep ensured is that the product was the best choice for the area. Since we were concerned that our current LL flooring was unsafe, especially with 3 small children, we took out a loan to purchase the new floors. Installation took 3 days instead of one, due to lack of materials, but overall the floor looked great. The installers were nice, communicated well, and clean up. Three months later, the flooring began to buckle in multiple areas. We called Empire to address the issue. They sent out an inspector and it was determined that the flooring was installed too tight or incorrectly. Two weeks later, after the materials were ordered, the flooring was repaired. Or so we thought. We are 10 months in from the original installation, and now the repaired sections, as well as others, are separating and buckling again. We are starting to think that we were duped into purchasing an inferior product. We will be calling empire again to come out again. Nothing like having to uninstall and reinstall all out your kitchen appliances 3 times in one year.

Terrible experience -- I've been waiting for 5 years to get some window treatments installed in my kitchen...the space is challenging and I haven't known what to do. Well, I've been saving money and so finally decided this was the year to get an expert in and do it. I was delighted to realize that someone would actually come to my home and would have suggestions as to what might work in this rather challenging space. The sales guy didn't seem to know what he was talking about -- young, perhaps...inexperienced, maybe. He had no suggestions; he had a book of choices...fortunately, I had someone with me who knows about window treatments and so we decided together what would work. I still went ahead and ordered because the sales rep seemed pleasant enough and I thought maybe he was just new. And...that was it. No follow up from anyone in the company, though I was told that someone would call to schedule a final measurement of the space, that someone would then call to tell me when the blinds had arrived and when I'd be charged the final amount, that someone would then call to schedule an installation time. No. No. No. *I* had to call every step of the way and, since everything is outsourced, no one ever had a clue as to what I was talking about. The calls and emails to the sales rep were not returned (well, one was...but that was after a week with no response) and so I continued to reach out to the company directly, trying to get some answers and information about my order. I finally received a call from the (outsourced) installation company today (after I called AGAIN this morning to find out what was happening)..."We'll be out today," he said. "No," I said. "You won't. I'm at work and wasn't told that this was happening today." The blinds are supposed to be installed on Thursday morning; we'll see. I will not be using this service/company again, no matter how reasonable their prices are and I encourage you not to use this company, either. Please, just go to your local window treatment store and do it that way. You'll save yourself, if not money, at least time, energy, and frustration. • UPDATE: Blinds installed this morning. But before that: I was finally contacted by Empire! Huzzah! Oh, wait. No, I was only contacted to be informed that I was being contacted because I needed to make the final payment before the blinds were installed. If I didn't pay before this morning at 8am, the blinds would not be installed. Of course, I paid. The account manager to whom I spoke -- in fact, everyone to whom I've spoken -- has been polite. That's the one good thing I have to say about this whole experience. So, the installers arrived this morning. I moved into the living room to stay out of their way. Perhaps they were unaware of the fact that my house is not large and that I could, therefore, hear every single word they said. They talked about how poorly the blinds were manufactured. How they were crooked. How they were hanging them crookedly and how crooked my windows are. (It's an old house. The sales manager from Empire didn't even indicate that it would be a problem and they're not noticeably crooked if you're looking at them.) "Wow," I kept hearing. As in -- can you believe how terrible these things are?? After much snorting and chuckling and muttered negative comments (including: "what do we do now?" "Read the instructions and see what it's all about." "I'm not going to read THOSE"), here's the kicker: "You get what you pay for. Unfortunately." How dare you. How DARE you. Maybe this is what I can afford. Maybe I have been saving money for 5 years to get blinds. And, yeah, maybe this IS what I can pay for. I am so, so offended. The sales manager, Matt, did call me a few weeks ago to inform me that the cordless option I'd chosen was not available. Fine, I said. That's fine. Guess what. Three of the blinds are cordless. Two of the blinds are not. That was not clear from Matt's call -- not at all. I was expecting all 5 blinds to be the same. They are not. So, now I have two blinds that don't match at all. Fantastic. As if that were not enough -- one of the blinds is defective. Ha. It won't go down all the way. So, the installers called their boss who is, apparently, going to call Empire (doubtful) to get a replacement. I cannot express how disappointed and frustrated I am with this whole experience. Please, don't go through Empire. At this point, I want these blinds removed, all of my money refunded, and to forget this experience. I'll save for another couple of years and go somewhere else.

I liked the quality of the materials and the installers did a great job. I disliked the sales guy that we dealt with, he was just not a very pleasant guy and messed up a lot of our order and it required a lot of arguing to get the pricing corrected.

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Installation of our carpet has been extremely frustrating. First, the installers brought the wrong carpet pad. During the installation, one of the installers apparently cut himself, and when they left, we had blood smeared on our walls in five different places. They didn't even try to clean this up.  Hope he wasn't infected with anything, because we had to clean this up ourselves.  Also, the installers broke hardware off of our cabinets, and didn't even tell us about this.  We just discovered it when we were checking out the job after they left. To top things off, we have two corners where there is a gap between the carpet and the wall.  Carpet looks horrible in these corners.

I gave Empire a call the day after installation and was asked to send in pictures of everything, which I did right away.  I have not been able to get a response since, even after following up today.  Customer service, among everything else that has happened, has been horrible.  If you want a professional carpet company, you may want to look elsewhere.

Update:  I just found out that the metal carpet transition strip into our closet is also not secured to the floor.  Yet another disappointment with this installation and this company.

I wouldn't give them a very good recommendation because they broke my television but they paid for it. They did a good job of laying the carpets. They were fast and efficient, no monkeying around with the work. I was without my TV for ten days and it was a bad situation all the way around since its hard to find a TV repair person. I had to find my own repair service. They took out the old carpet and put down the new. Their price was real reasonable. They were a day late. They said they were coming Monday but then they called and said they couldn't come because they didn't have enough crew to do my carpet. They came the next day and were on time coming here. I might use them again but they wouldn't do work for me again because of the incident.

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     Did enough sawing in the house to create a day's worth of cleaning up dust from furniture, floors, baseboards, window sills, screens, glass, doors .....

     Overall, the floors look good except for the 22 x 1 inch, 6 x 1 inch, another 6 x1 inch, and 10 x 1/2 inch gaps in the closet.  The installer said Empire didn't give him enough material to complete the closet, but left two unused planks in our garage.

     Empire does not have their own installers, but rather takes bids from local subcontractors.  It is a 'crap shoot' who will come.  This guy had no business card, no company name..., was pleasant and gregarious though.  

...... In retrospect, I should have pulled up a chair and observed the process for the twelve and a half hours the crew was here.

     My advice: Don't sign anything with Empire until after you investigate the independent installer's past performance.

   5/8----- Margret, customer relations from Empire, sent out a different installer to rectify the closet problem, Hugo, he did a good job. Changed my rating from "C" to a "B". --- No reimbursement, at this time though, for the day of cleaning up after the original installers. 

  5/28 - Empire was scheduled to do my kitchen floor, but I canceled in within the "three day window" after the initial bedroom floors install issue. -- so I contacted their other heavily advertised competitor in the area, 651Carpets.  That local company turned out to be a huge mistake.  Unlike Empire, there is no way to contact a customer rep, no phone# or email at 651carpets - one can only contact a receptionist/scheduler. Empire's professionalism in dealing with customers' concerns via phone, email and several contact people who want to fix the problem is incomparable with 651Carpets. After impossible communication and unresponsive behavior with folks at 651Carpets concerning our kitchen floor install, I changed my rating for Empire (again), up to an A. 

good

The salesperson was quick and pushy, almost like he was trying to make a quota for the day. He showed us what he had and we felt pressured into signing for the "better deal" and his sales tactics.The first install went horrible. We had brand new fabric wallpaper just installed, and the Empire carpet installers were careless with the new pieces of carpet dragging them across the fragile cloth wallpaper fibers, causing them to fray in some spots. When they laid the carpet down they had to splice large chunks of carpet because they didn't cut the corners correctly. In one area it was bare where there wasn't any carpet at all. The vinyl flooring bubbled up in a lot of areas, and it still isn't adhering to the floor underneath. You can still see large one foot in diameter bubbles under the vinyl floor. The second time they redid the carpet, and the installer took the brand new WHITE carpet out to the black asphalt driveway and cut the pieces that he needed out there and brought them in to be put down. For the most part this process went okay. The carpet peeled for several months causing the vacuum bags to fill up every time I vacuumed. The carpet isn't as good as we hoped it would have been. There is an area that is about 8 inches in diameter that is a darker shade than the rest of the carpet.

It was a really big hassle. I think I only got my carpet done the right way because I was really proactive in dealing with them. I had a bad experience with dealing with them. They're a little sleazy. It just depends on who you deal with. I think there's some sleazy people working for the company. I was fortunate because the guy who put the carpet in was honest and he saw that there was a problem. The installers were great, but I had to get in touch with the higher-ups to make them bring more carpet out, to fix it, so I wouldn't have a seam running through the wrong place, right through the middle of the walk area, which they were trying to tell me was normal. I had to deal with a really terrible, unprofessional person. It was pretty bad. I had to deal with the middle man, which was bad. When I went over his head, that person was much nicer. They're hard to rate, because the installers were great, but dealing with the middle-man salesman was very poor. He was bizarrely unprofessional.