Franchino's Stone and Tile

The job they did this time was great.  They put it the first time and they did not have to back to fix it.  They were very nice and it looks great.  You can even hardly tell.  They cleaned up and they were very nice.  They answered all the questions that I had.  They were friendly and they did a good job.  I like them.   The price is reasonable and lower compared to other service providers.  They were quick and worked with us.  They were punctual.

I went to Franchinos to purchase a granite countertop. While at the store I the sale clerk who was very pleasant talked to me about tile that I could purchase to match the countertop with the bathroom I was remodeling. It made sense at the time to make both purchases at the same place. The sales clerk told me that they could not provide a price as our contractor would be recieving a "contractor rate." To date the reciepts recieved from our contractor provided by Franchinos reflect no contractor rate. Our contractor would not line item our contractor and too would not provide us a rate for these services up front. We placed the order without being able to access the cost (my 1st mistake). Finally my contractor told us that we had purchased $17 sq foot for our tile. For the bathroom we were remodeling we would never have purchased tile at this rate. When it was time to move forward with the remodel project on November 4th we were informed that Franchinos was having problems getting in the bull nose tile. This was in part going to hold up the remodel project. On January 3 (2 months later) we continued not to have the bull nose tile and had by that time placed the entire project on hold with no clear date for when the bull nose tile would be coming in. I was told that it was on a ship coming across the ocean from Itally through the icy water. I was even told that "sometimes the ships with the tile sink and it takes even longer." The tile I recieved was a slate porecelan tile from Italy. The tile came in beat up boxes, glued together, with pock marks in the tile. The tile came in what looked like different dye lots and was not uniform at all. It would have looked terrible up on the wall in the condtiion it came in. We went to the tile company to show them the condition of the tile. We were told that this tile came with the marks in it, we were told that the tile was glued together to hold the tile together, we were told that the reason for the vast variation in the tile coloring, etc. was that it supposed to have a "stone effect." We decided that due to the poor condition of the tile, the cost, and the lack of a clear date for the bull nose tile thus holding up the project we would return the tile and go else where. Upon returning the tile we were charged a $450.00 restocking fee, a $180.00 freight charge for roughly $1200 in tile thus approximately 50% of the cost of the tile. In addition without our knowledge upfront we were charged an additional $150.00 from our contractor to return the tile back to Franchinos. Had we known this we would have returned the tile ourselves. Fanchinos provided grout without talking to us that our contractor picked up. They refused to take back the grout but upon further inspection it was not epoxy grout that is typically used for bathrooms. We were told by our contractor that the grout sold to us would not have withstood the water in a bathroom over time. We were not provided any information regarding the freight charges as we were told this was "proprietory information." We had to add an extra $630.00 to our bathroom project for the restocking and frieght charges for tile that we did not use plus a $150.00 return cost from our contractor with a total cost of $780.00 from my pocket book. This is a lot of money for the company to turn around resell the tile to someone else to use. We also were out several months waiting for the bull nose tile to finish the project with no clear date. We were operating in our house with only a half bath thus were without shower facilities for 2 months that included both the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays with yes company that had to stay else where and parties. We were disappointed that we were unable to show off our new bathroom facilities when entertaining for the holidays but instead the guests had to use the downstairs half bath with the washer/dryer in the room.  When we went to a different competitor we asked about pock marks in their Italian porcelan tile and were told that was not something common in their tile as it would collect dirt, germs, etc over time. We asked about dye lots and were told that they would not sell tile unless it all came together small, large, and bull nose due to dye lot issues and would encourage people to wait until all the tile came in from the same dye lot. The competitor encouraged us to purchase extra tile in order to make sure that we had enough in the same dye lot. They bought back what we did not use and there was no restocking or frieght charges. We recieved the tile in a week and now have a full functioing bathroom. We and our contractors have made it clear to Franchinos that we will not do business with them and will not recommend them or Benjamins that is their sister store.  This was an extremely agregious experience!