I had no problems working with Patrick, but one vi...

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 keep clean. I was lied to when I was told it's easy 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.