Complaint Review: Cali Bamboo - San Diego Select State/Province

Cali Bamboo's website states, "At Cali Bamboo, giving our customers an exceptional purchasing experience is a top priority."  As their customer who owned over 1000 square feet of their product, I saw that their words and actions are very different.  By my firsthand experience with them I can confirm that the negative reviews you see online are all true!  I thought angry people were the ones complain online, but my feelings have changed.  I am mainly writing this complaint to protect other people from having the same experience as I did and to inform the consumer what kind of company they are dealing with if they should be so unfortunate to receive a defective product. 

Long story short, my Cali Bamboo Java Fossilized Wide Click product could not install.  It seemed that there was too much wax in the joints (a local flooring specialist thinks the joints swelled up).  I contacted the company for advice on how to install these floors.  After sending them photos and video Cali Bamboo determined that it was an installation problem.  I was told that "the click lock system is not always easy to click and lock together..."  Then why is it advertised as easy for the do-it-yourselfer?  I had hired a professional who has been in the business for over 30 years and is very competent.  He's done it all and for a very long time.  If he says something's wrong, something's wrong.  Besides, it doesn't take much to realize there was something wrong.

After a week of the customer service agent saying she'll get back to me at a certain time and not following though and ignoring my calls and emails, I finally got a response from the company.  Unfortunately, the response was that I wait for another 2-4 weeks.  The boards had been acclimating for 1 month by that time!  She told me to research hardwood floors and I'll see that this is normal and assured me the boards will click together.  It didn't seem right that the click mechanism wasn't working from the start.  I'd found somone who said that even his worst bowed boards clicked together.  I had a different problem.  I did do research and spoke with flooring inspectors in HI and CA, the NWFA tech contact, and professional installers in Hawaii who all told me that hardwood can take long to acclimate, but they didn't think that would solve my problem and a month is long enough to know.  They all told me that if I'm having a problem now, don't install for I'm bound to have problems in the future.  Well, we couldn't install anyway without great struggle.

I'm so grateful I bought the product from Lowe's who has been wonderful through this all.  I believe that someone is protecting my installer and I from even greater economic and emotional problems in the future.  Last week I found the Cali Bamboo samples I got in December and they have mold all around them.  Gross.  Yes, things mold here in East Hawaii, but within 3 months is unacceptable.  Nothing else has mold on it around here.  I truly belive that had the product installed, the boards would have immediately started separating exposing the mold and the company and flooring inspector would have ruled against my installer and the environmental conditions.  Innocent people remain innocent!

I may have been saved from future trouble, but I still have to pay extra for all the time my installer took trying to get the flooring to install and dealing with the company.  I am on a construction schedule and the floors are needed to close the loan/bond so time is money as I pay interest only on the loan before it rolls into a motgage.  Also, I now have to look for new flooring and have already budgeted for the Cali Bamboo floors and install (Cali Bamboo offered to send me new flooring, but that was only after Lowe's got involved and exasperating me to the point where they lost my loyalty as a customer).  Now prices have gone up this year, even Cali Bamboo has increased their prices since my purchase, and I'm stuck with my same budget so I have to find more money for that and labor prices that also have risen.  It's rough being a consumer!!!