Own Lumber Liquidators Laminate Flooring?

If you own Lumber Liquidator’s laminate flooring, you might want to listen to the report by CBS’s 60 Minutes (above). Anderson Cooper tells consumers that the flooring they bought at Lumber liquidations, according to their tests across the country, are made with formaldehyde and are exceeding indoor air pollution levels designated by the EPA.  Some samples 20 times higher than what is considered safe and acceptable.

I find this story so interesting because in the last month, I was in the market for a new wood floor, and I went to Lumber Liquidators to look at their products, and my experience at their store really raised my eyebrows. I ended up not buying their product because I simply didn’t trust them. While I wasn’t looking at laminate flooring, I was looking at hardwood floor. And several of the products I was interested in (red oak) were not available. I waited three weeks and checked again, and still no stock. That was a bad sign considering the store was totally empty on my visit. I was the only customer.

I even called the retailer a couple of times to find out when they’d get more product in, and they told me they didn’t know. You don’t make money without a a product on the shelves to sell. And it certainly wasn’t flying off the shelves with no one in the store.

Of course they said they were happy to order me what I needed, but I saw a huge downfall in that offer. If I had a bad batch, I was going to stuck in a loop waiting for more orders, and what if the orders didn’t match, or had quality issues. I saw my project turning into many months of hassles without much effort. I saw a lose/lose scenario before I even started.

When I asked the store clerk if I could return boards that were defective, he told me no. They would only switch entire boxed bundles. Without inventory, it was a deal breaker. I also found that they had bad reviews online in the middle of doing my homework. Upon finding out, I called the store and identified that I saw that they had bad reviews. I asked them how they would stand by their product if different quality issues arose and they said that no one had returned a box of the product I wanted in over two years.

I didn’t buy it for one minute after reading dozens and dozens of bad reviews, and seeing a video of YouTube of the exact problems encountered.

Naturally, I decided to go elsewhere. They had a handful of red flags that told me not to buy their product before I saw the 60 Minutes report.

Now seeing Lumber Liquidators in the news and watching the owner talk, I am confident I made the right decision not to trust Lumber Liquidators. Seeing the the owner talk to Cooper, I do not trust him.