As a retail floor covering dealer you have certain responsibilities to yourself and your customer which should be heeded. One of those is insuring that the carpet, or other flooring materials, you install in their homes or businesses is free of visible defects. Now, I know that some of you may balk at the thought of having to do the work of the manufacturer by inspecting all of the flooring materials you receive, whether it be carpet, vinyl, laminate or rugs. But the fact remains that it is your skin on the line if the product is installed with visible defects. Some of you smaller dealers don’t have the space to inspect the product and others don’t bother, figuring the manufacturer should do that because it’s not your job. While these are legitimate factors it doesn’t change your responsibility to yourself and your customer.

In these times of every manufacturer falling over themselves to be the low cost producer, with each trying to get the products to you faster than their competition and with everyone damning the torpedoes and going full speed ahead, you have to be much more diligent. Business in the industry is very good and no one has time to slow down, so in many cases everything that gets made gets shipped.

Some of it gets “chanced shipped,” that is, the chance is taken that the blemish in the product won’t be noticed or if it is it can be “adjusted” out of the product when you file a claim. This may be denied and you may not believe it but it is a fact of like in the industry, like it or not. Trust my 28 years of working in the sewer of the industry on this one.

Even though the manufacturer inspects the carpet and in some cases a pow wow is conducted on the line, these human beings are entrusted with making a decision to ship or not. The decision may be based on experience, the fact that in their lighting they see a flaw but in yours, you may not or that the order has to get shipped or be lost and therefore the product must go out the door. You can’t just grab another package of carpet and throw it into a grocery bag. This stuff takes time to produce, it isn’t breakfast cereal and neither you nor your customer is going to wait. So now you get the product as produced, good or bad.

Low and behold your installer unrolls or unpackages the product and sees a problem. It may be a hole, latex on the face of the carpet, a fugitive dye spot, missing tufts, and high or low lines, yarn streaks, stop marks, or a bad mend. Any and all of these are visible defects that should have been seen at the mill, and maybe they were, but you got the product anyway. Now what do you do?

Even if you inspected the product when it came in you may not have had time to re-order and your customer may have already had their place torn apart awaiting the installation. A very familiar scenario. So, now you take the chance and send the carpet or whatever out anyway and install it.

Maybe the installer can cut out the blemish or work around it. Maybe you can change the layout and put seams where they weren’t going to go before or shouldn’t go. Or, maybe you’ll just install the product and hope the consumer doesn’t notice the blemish. You’ll try anything to get the job in and get paid so as not to experience the pain of yet another customer complaint. Uh- h, guess what? When you came in this morning there was a call from Mrs. Baker.

She said when she was vacuuming the carpet she noticed a hole in the hallway. The carpet’s only been down 10 days and they haven’t even used it that much to cause the problem.

When you talk to Mrs. Baker she says, “What, were your guys blind that they didn’t notice this thing when it was installed and don’t you check this stuff out before you send it out? And how do you answer? Tell her that it’s the mills fault, they’re supposed to inspect it. What do you think she’ll think of you and your responsibility to her as a customer? She doesn’t care who was supposed to see this obvious flaw first she just doesn’t want to be the inspection department for the rest of you. Maybe you can try a repair, which she may allow reluctantly, and which may look worse than the hole, So, we’re back to square one.

Mrs. Baker isn’t happy, you’re not happy and the poor claims analysts at the mill are inundated this same morning with at least 50 other retailers calling complaining of similar situations regarding visible defects. You don’t care about your retail comrades, this hot potato belongs to you and you want to pass it on but Mrs. Baker still has a problem. She’s your customer and she expects you to satisfy her. So, you have to do whatever it takes to do that. I might suggest that the simplest way to rectify the visible defect situation would be for all of you, in retail groups or associations, to sit down with the manufacturers and put a stop to this. To simplistic? I don’t think so; it’s the way to solve a problem. The alternative is what you have now. The, “Don’t worry if you have a problem we’ll take care of it,” syndrome, isn’t helping your customer and it isn’t helping anybody’s business.

For carpet to just feel better it has to look better too and unfortunately the first one to get the blame for it not doing so is the retailer, because that’s who the consumer buys the product from. In most cases she hasn’t a clue who the manufacture is and that’s exactly why the hot potato of responsibility lies with the retailer. You sold it, you hold it. So, what are you going to do about it?