We recently purchased a house. The carpet was good quality, but dirty and a bit worn in places. Due to the funky smell in the house, the previous owner's cats, and our child's cat allergies, we decided to just say fuck it and put in new carpeting. We did a staircase and the entire upstairs (4 bedrooms and hallway). The cost came out to about $6,000.
We had a quick "check or credit card?" conversation, and ended up using the credit card for the points. My husband wasn't thrilled because he hates using the credit card for anything due to the potential for sticker shock at the end of the billing cycle. But dude, it's a "free" $60 back in points! We'll just pay it off on time and all is well.
And we did... except....
The carpet sucked.
The quality was nothing like the sample. It was short and flat feeling, not as soft or plush as the sample. The installers broke our window screen, broke two light fixtures, and damaged a closet door. The window was hot glued back into place, as was the one light fixture. The padding wasn't even in places. The staircase was done in the wrong style (Waterfall vs Hollywood... it's a thing). The installers wouldn't let me upstairs to check the work, they kept ushering me back down the stairs. I found out one of the installers was bilingual, but he refused to speak in English to me and my Spanish is awful so when I tried to ask about the broken items, he basically played dumb. I had to call the supervising installer to ask him to ask his guys to stop breaking shit.
I took pictures and documented everything. I called corporate a few days later when my head was clear.
It was nothing but a run around game. I'd get disconnected, or put on hold for 20+ minutes. We had an inspector come out and he lied on his report. He claimed the screen was unable to be taken out from the inside. Okay so an entire fucking house has window screens only accessible from the outside? Yeah that makes sense. Fuckwit. He said there was no damage to the (hideous and tacky) chandelier, even though you could the missing pieces and I had pictures of the broken glass. He questioned if the other light fixture and closet were already broken since we bought the house recently. Another inspector got shitty with us and said the padding was fine (WTF YOU CAN FEEL THE 3" GAP) and that we need to check our contract because the stairs were done per contract. Fucking wrong. It was such absolute bullshit.
After a month of this bullshit, I had enough. I called the credit card company (Chase Sapphire card) and filed a dispute.
The customer service agent was super helpful. She asked a hundred questions about timelines, communication, documentation, and contracts. I sent my cell phone records of calls to/from the company (including two 20+ minute calls that involved me being on hold for that entire time before having to hang up and try again). I sent the contract with the part about the staircase, and then took pictures of the staircase to show the wrong style. I sent the PDF of all the pictures with notations on all the damages (which was sent to the company, twice).
The dispute happened on a Friday, by Monday we were refunded $6,000.
As you can imagine, the company was suddenly very eager to talk to us. I received 2 calls on Tuesday, and another on Wednesday. I called Chase to ask them -- should I be picking up these phone calls and talking to the company? I was worried that the company would get the dispute reversed because I wasn't cooperating or something. Chase said nope, they had their chance to fix it and all of my documentation was approved. It's up to us if we want to have the dispute canceled in favor of the carpet being properly done.
One of the higher ups at the company emailed me asking to resolve this. I responded to him that no, you had an entire month to resolve this. I sent him all of the documentation that I sent Chase. I said I felt bad for having to go this route (and I really do feel bad), but I tried to be reasonable and work through their system. I never heard back.
So needless to say, we gladly accepted the $6,000 credit and will replace the broken items with that money. Yeah, the carpet isn't great, but it was basically free -- minus a month of bullshit stress and phone calls.
TL;DR -- bought a carpet, it sucked. Company wouldn't resolve the issue. Credit card company came through like a fucking champ.
Submitted July 18, 2018 at 04:04PM by topsy_tervy https://ift.tt/2JBADPN
