A COMPLAINT WITH MATTING, PILE REVERSAL, AND CRUSH MARKS

A married couple recently complained their month-old carpet had a “funny look” in the traffic lanes, a line in the bedroom, a color variation in the hallway, and was coming up in several areas against the walls. This was a young couple with a new baby, in an immaculately kept, small ranch home with unalterable traffic lanes. Their primary concern was appearance retention, just what they weren’t getting.

They had asked for a high performance product because it would get a high volume of traffic, especially in the hallway. The carpet in the traffic lanes was suffering from some matting and pile reversal. It was a cut-pile olefin, extremely dense, and of good quality. Unfortunately, cut-pile olefin will compress, as it has very little resiliency; therefore, yarn compression is normal, particularly in cut-pile styles.

Pile reversal is basically, vertical re-orientation of the carpet face yarns. The denser the carpet, the more likely this condition is to manifest itself. There have been some developments in determining its cause and prevention, but not all have been universally accepted.

Because the broadloom was high quality, the consumer was not expecting it to look that way after one month; but this condition was obvious and very displeasing to the couple. Unless they make lots of noise however, the carpet would not be replaced for this condition.

The next issue was the line down the center of the baby’s bedroom. This was a crush mark which the installer said would come out as the carpet was walked upon. Sorry, but this will not happen with this product. Steaming may not help relieve the crush marks in olefin carpet, but in this case, since the spot is minor, it might work in combination with grooming to pull up the yarn. It should make enough of a difference in this case to eliminate this particular concern.

The fill piece in the hallway, about 2x3 ft. , falls in adjacent to three doorways and is a layout mess up. It is off shade enough to be slightly noticeable, but is an irritant to the consumer in light of all the other concerns. All the seams were perfectly made, but when consumers have one problem, they start looking for and seeing others. This fill piece was obviously not discussed with them, and the carpet coming up at the wall where it existed made it more obvious.

This brings us to the next complaint: carpet coming up in several areas next to walls. When lifted to determine the exact cause, two things were immediately evident: The tackstrip is the full thickness of the carpet from the wall. Ideally, it should be half this far so the carpet can be tucked and properly tensioned. And, the pad is covering part of the tackstrip. This not only keeps the carpet from engaging the pins and anchoring, but it also slightly lifts the carpet.

This condition, had it been the only concern, could have been easily rectified by pulling back the carpet, trimming the pad, moving or replacing the tackstrip, and then stretching and re-anchoring the carpet.

In summary, what we have here are several issues: *A problem relative to anchoring the carpet and layout *Misinformation relative to the minor crush mark, and *Overselling of the carpet and misunderstanding of the yarn’s performance, not only by salespeople but also by manufacturers who warrant the products against matting.

In the consumer’s eyes, something is terribly wrong. Will this carpet get replaced? Probably not. Some issues can be resolved, but this dealer will not fix the couple’s disillusionment. They may never buy carpet again, which is unlikely; certainly, they won’t buy it from this source anymore. Don’t let something like this happen to you.