I had Empire Carpet come to my house and the slick salesman told me I needed 200+square yards and he then quoted me a price of 10, 000 dollars.

The same Shaw carpet cost me 3, 800 at Home Depot for 160 square yards. My savings are paying for my daughter's first year of college.

Empire advertised 50% off, the salesman didn't even bring that carpet in the house because of the poor quality. He then told me that another company would charge me 13, 500 for the carpet and proceeded to tell me how he would save me 3, 500 dollars.

This gloried middle man company just inflates the price to create it's own profit under the guise of quality, convenience and speed. Buyer beware!!! This is the most expensive services you can get. I fell for the advertising and had them come out to a house I was remodeling. I should have known right away that someone is paying for all that advertising. I got a bid to install laminate flooring for a 500 sq. ft area. The bid was $18, 000. That's right $$$18, 000 but with the 50% off it was the bargain price of $$$$9, 000. Now you have understand that I had already done all the prep work and the house was empty.

I was baffled at the price being quoted and of course asked for a breakdown but as others have found out they don't do that. If they did it would become apparently clear that they are making exorbitant profits. There is no transparency here they have to hide their costs otherwise none would buy from them unless they have money to burn. I laughed at the sales person and sent her packing. I decided to do the floor myself and bought a laminate on sale at the box store for 500.00 bucks. I installed it slowly and carefully over the next 5 days; not a difficult job. So 9, 000.00 minus 500.00 equals 8, 500.00. I figure that I paid myself $1, 700.00 for 8 hours work each day. The most I have ever made in a day. Now I realize that there flooring is probably more expensive then the flooring I got but I figure I could have but the most expensive floor out there and still come out way ahead. That was 4 years ago and the floor still looks great.

My concern is for the little old lady or those not savvy or cautious who fall for a firm handshake and all the hype; 50% off, next day installation, and no payments for a year. Please get 3 bids at least, deal with local hometown businesses or make it an adventure and do it yourself and keep your hard earned money.

This business is an unequivocal rip-off and they prey on your trust and your ignorance. It's no deal. Good luck to all of you out there.

So yea we saw the commercial, been wanting new flooring for a while. Finally we decided to go ahead and do it. From the start it was a mes... We made the appointment and the sales man was an hour late. I figured rush hour, busy area, we will live. He got here and was friendly, at first, but pushed to get down to business. This is my first time. So flooring, and pricing, is all new to me. Anyways, he went on about how good the product is, only top of the line stuff. To be honest I can care less that the laminate only has a 6% percent leak through. Not like I am dumping buckets of water on my floor anytime soon.

Finally he measures and comes up with a number. I don't know what he measured but I know for a fact we had less that 500 sq ft we wanted done. Actually when I tried measuring it myself, it's about 400 sq ft, give or take on weird angles and such. So finally he comes up with $8, 700.00!!! Well I didn't, at first, know that was a lot for such small square feet and laminate, not real wood, floors. 50% off??? Well, the product is supposedly 50% off. They don't do 50% off of labor because it's a 4 man job and they are not going to only pay for 2 men. He did explain that all 4 workers would have 10 years of experience.

Still, as expensive as it was, everything seemed to be going ok. Then I asked about 3 steps by my front door. Just 3 steps. Well you can't put laminate on steps, that would have to be hard wood. Okay, I thought, how about it. He told me it would cost an extra $1, 100 to do three damn steps! $1, 100 freakin bucks! All because it has to be hard wood. Well, we were financed out, and didn't have the extra cash. So after paying $8, 700, they couldn't give us 3 damn steps?? That started it all...

The next day the workers came. Well the sales man was lying. Wouldn't give 50% off of the work because it's a 4 man job. Well then why were only 3 men working on it? All ten years experience, at least... that was a lie, one of the was 17, and rarely did anything except cary supplies, sweep, and whatever else they asked him to do. So really I paid for a 4 mon installation, and they doubled up on the money. That upset me as well.

SO I start looking around, talking to people, etc. I figured I paid $17.40 a square foot!!! Installation and everything. That is way too expensive. I even asked the workers and had I bought the flooring myself and contracted them, I could have had it installed for just over $2, 000!!. AND the sales guy who explained that half of the price is automatically for the installation... OKAY I understand that. But that means the actual product WHICH I SUPPOSEDLY GOT 50% OFF was $8.70 a square foot!!! That is still about 4 times the amount for that exact product than I could get at a do it yourself store.

It gets worse. I wrote about it on the website. They said a 'customer service rep' would contact me in 1 to 3 days. Nothing happened. I did it again, nothing happened. I called Empire again, to speak directly myself, they said they had to contact a local office to speak with me so they can fix any problems. FINALLY the local guy called me. BUT he called during the hours I was working, even though I put on the website when is best to call. Then they never called back since. I have tried calling and get the same thing.

So I did more research and found out I could have bought the products myself, hired someone to do it, and pay less than half, or about half, of what I paid for this crappy experience. After researching this more, I realized that as soon as my year of no financing hits, they will rape you. If you made the mistake of going with them, pay it off before the year is up.

DON'T USE EMPIRE TODAY... complete rip off, and no customer service!!!

I hired Empire Carpet, a national company, to install carpet at our home. The commercial on TV shows uniformed men installing the carpet, and the salesmen who sold the carpet was very nice. The 2 men who came out were a very different story. The dressed as the hadn't showered in days, they reeked of pot, they were late, they peed in my driveway and they took a 'smoke' break too often.

I called my sales guy to complain and he did absolutely nothing. He later said he did not want to reprimand the guys because he did not want them to lash out at us later. He said he would just give them less work. How unprofessional, I would never recommend them to anyone. I was pissed!

To have Empire return the full amount of money paid for flooring. Remove cherry flooring and replace with carpeting of same quality they removed prior to installing floors. Feb 2007 had Empire install cherry floors in my townhouse. In all rooms plus stairs at a cost of $14, 000. This was done to improve my home and make it sale ready. In early November I removed a rug in dining room. The color under the rug is greatly different from the area around it. I called Empire and was told it would take a week, then a month, then six months and now they state perhaps never to have an evenly colored floor. The entire house is the same, I had rugs and furniture leave uneven colors in every room. This is a liability to my home. I was unable to sell it and had to rent it due to the decrease in value.

Empire Today LLC strives for complete customer satisfaction. Empire has explained to the customer that the reddish- brown color darkens to a deep red with exposure to light. The customer was also told that the distinctive grain patterns enhance Brazilian Cherry's natural beauty, and that the flooring has the most dramatic and desirable reaction to light exposure. All of this information was listed on the sample that was shown the customer at the time of the sales appointment. The area that has darkened is the area that was not covered with customer’s area rug.

The above is Empires response. I have a copy of the disclosures given by Empire at time of sale and will attach that. I did sign that and no mention of different colors is made in that document. I did not read the above text on the sample of Brazilian Cherry, but even if I did it would not tell me not to place furniture or rugs on the floor. No mention is made of different colors. Had I known that if I placed furniture and rugs on the floors would result in different floor colors I would never have had the work done. I will enclose black and white photographs of the damage done to my home. These were taken months after removal of dining rug and no improvement can be seen. These photographs are not as good as the color ones, I can email color prints to you.

Please act of this as I do not want any other Colorado resident to suffer such a liability by installing Empire Flooring.