So to recap, my 7 months pregnant wife ordered the tiles over the phone from Fired Earth. She wasn't given any guidance at all about the nature of the stone we were using. Of course the email confirming the order did say "check the terms and conditions". The website showing the bridghampton tiles says in a small box "Extreme Variation" : I would have no idea this meant more variation than you would normally expect with a natural stone, being our first time ever buying these sort of tiles.
Fired Earth are have told me they would not normally give guidance to customers other than this as they have been told this is rude by previous customers in the past. There is also guidance on the invoice but in very small writing which we were not directed to, again we are novices at this but would have appreciated a little bit more help here. They also say because we ordered samples from the website they would have assumed we did not need any guidance when actually ordering. Hmmmm.
Our tiler did not indicate any problems with working with these tiles, he says he opened 4 of the six boxes and mixed them up. He also refuses to believe this is a moisture issue, and says it is colour variation as some other tilers I have asked believe. As when he finished he did not clean the tiles, I'm wondering if excess sealant was left on the tiles, which could have darkened them. But it does appear to be in places whole sheets that are darker.
If particular sheets of the tiles were darker the tiler did not ask us if we were Ok to use these. He said he thought that was the mix.
I'm really annoyed with the attitude of Fired Earth, I have asked if someone could come and look at the floor and they have refused. We had the tiles unopened for quite a while, we were delayed with our renovation and had the small matter of my wife being knocked down to contend with so this delayed our project. I feel let down by the installation and frankly the attitude of this company (Topps Tiles better customer service in my opinion)
I still owe the tiler a third of the money. He feels he is being criticised because of Fired Earth's lack of help with this, and that he should be paid all of his money. I asked him to come back and improve the floor. He has offered to cut out the darker sheets and put the unused sheets in but offers no guarantees it would be better (thinking he would use a disk cutter, difficult to do neatly?). Im not sure exactly how he can do this with hexagon tiles and it look ok?
Regarding the earlier photos of the "Hamptons " floor ( that looks brilliant btw) this is also classed as Extreme Variation but looks very similar to fired earth photos and their samples. As opposed to what we have.
Our baby is due this week so could do without this hassle!
Sorry for long message but that is the current state of play.....
