Bela Rajpoot loves her new laminate floor, but it didn't start out that way. She points to some of the former problem spots.
"Right over here, the wood was getting bumped up like this in places and over here it also was happening the same thing, the gap from the wall to the wood was getting bigger and bigger," said Rajpoot.
The blue tape in photos from Bela marks where bumps developed on the plank. Another photo shows the gap between the wall and the flooring.
"It was almost like a quarter inch of a gap over here," said Rajpoot.
The material ripped out from her home is stacked in the corner at A to Z Carpet Flooring in Hayward where Rajpoot bought her flooring.
"This is all her stuff. When we pulled it out, it's all garbage," said Naim Rahimi from A to Z Carpet.
The store's owner explains what happened.
"The material in the lock system is defective. So doesn't hold the lock together," said Rahimi.
Rahimi tells us that the individual boards are supposed to lock together, but that the locks failed to work. He blamed the manufacturer.
"So the manufacturer sends an inspector to inspect the flooring. They inspect the flooring and they say material is not wrong. Flooring is wrong," said Rajpoot.
We called Expo Floors and it sent us two inspection reports from two different inspectors. In the reports, the Expo inspector wrote, "The floor felt uneven, and should have been leveled prior to the installation."
"It's not her floor. Her floor was perfectly fine," said Rahimi.
A to Z Carpet refused to reinstall it until Expo floors replaced what A to Z considered defective material. Meanwhile, Rajpoot was left with a living room where half the flooring had been ripped out and half was still there.
Her mother tripped and badly hurt her knee and bruised her arms. We contacted A to Z and asked them why the customer was caught in the middle of a dispute between the store and manufacturer.
"'You need to get this thing done right away' and that's when they had to take care of it and reinstall the whole flooring," said Rajpoot.
And they did, Rajpoot got her new floor.
"Michael Finney and his team really knows how to get the problem resolved and help the customers," said Rajpoot.
We're glad to have helped. If you have a problem you can't get resolved, email 7 On Your Side.
