Erin Waters

Review of Empire Today, LLC

What a hideous waste of time. I ordered carpet, k...

What a hideous waste of time. I ordered carpet, kitchen tile and blinds.

Carpet - found decent carpet at market price and they advised installation next day. Which was important as I had a media chest being installed the next day after so carpet had to be down. Installer never showed for appointment and nobody called. Eventually I called at end of day and they advised it would have to be rescheduled for a week later with no reason given. I luckily saved the number from when the installer called In the AM and I called him direct in and bribed him with $120 tip to come, and he did. It cost me $120 premium and had to be here until 9:00pm. Good on their employee for coming, but he needed to be bribed or I would have been screwed.

Tile - installer couldn't speak a word of English and was about 19-21 years old. I have old vinyl in a kitchen and it was a mess to tear up. Part way through installer got sick of the mess and motioned he wanted to leave. I got on the phone with Empire and they claimed the subfloor was bad (they couldn't understand the kid either), so I advised to just put new vinyl over it (common install). By that time he had called the office, I could tell from the gestures that there was confusion and he didn't want to touch this job because he still thought I wanted to remove existing vinyl. He left the job but damaged my existing vinyl (which was fine but wrong color), and cut into teak door frames and did other damage. These kids were clueless. My other contractor on site couldn't believe what they had done and ran over to Home Depot and grabbed me some tile and did the job for 40% less than Empire.

Blinds - I made an appointment and got a confirmation window. Nobody showed up. At the end of the night I called and they advised that the person couldn't come today - well that was obvious as it was 7pm by then and I had been waiting all day. They rescheduled for the next day. Got a call in the AM and the person on the phone advised of a window. I got a call a half hour after the window ended and eventually a sales person showed up an hour and a half after the time window. They had a bag of blinds samples and admitted to me that they usually just do carpeting and flooring. It became very obvious they were totally clueless and they tried to get me to do it over the phone with an experienced blinds person. I had to send them away as they were of no help.

I contacted Customer Service over 17 times to get these issues resolved, both in the moment and after the fact. Ms. White (Manager of the local branch), was totally unhelpful and offered no consideration or assistance. It escalated to a regional guy Tim Sherwin - he was slick on the phone and excellent at trying to turn everything around to seem like it was my fault, which bordered the absurd. He took zero responsibility and fed me a lot of BS. His tactics would fall on deaf ears for the uninitiated and be a total insult to the sophisticated. He came across like a cheap salesman and between he and Ms. White's irrational and unrealistic approach to resolving all of this - the treatment inspired me to share my story on and many review and social media sites as possible.

Summary - pass on Empire - I learned my lesson. Home Depot is the way to go. They have excellent products, people you can talk to in person - and they care about their brand and their Customers.