Pergo review: Worthless Warranty 6

I purchased my Pergo Honeysuckle Oak Outlast laminate flooring planks at my local Home Depot. The flooring was installed in November. In December I noticed that some of the planks were peeling. I filed a claim with the customer service representative at Home Depot. Upon opening a new package of planks, my contractor noted that a new plank was defective. I have complied with providing Pergo photos of defective planks and information requested. The last questions were: Do you have pets that have been on the floor? How many times have you cleaned the flooring and what have you cleaned the floor with? Did your contractor caulk around the edge of the flooring? How many planks are defective? What was the costs for your contractor to repair the plank he repaired? It is interesting to note that the advertisement on the Pergo packaging shows a paw print and states "scratch resistant". Regardless, I have no pets that have been on the floor. I cleaned the flooring twice with a broom and swiffer pad. The floor is a floating floor, so my contractor would not have caulked around the edges. My contractor fixed one plank that was defective because he had all the flooring installed, when I walked in and discovered a defective plank. My contractor installed plank flooring in a 3-story house that does have dogs running on the floor with nails that can be heard. There is no damage to any of the flooring. My Home Depot customer representative told me this past week to year up my present Pergo flooring and upgrade to vinyl plank flooring. I said vinyl plank flooring is for areas that could have water leaks, such as kitchens, not living rooms. Pergo will not pay for the labor to tear up their defective flooring or lay new flooring. I, the consumer, will have to pay for that. If this claim is not resolved soon, I plan to file with the Better Business Bureau, as well as with other applicable consumer protection agencies. I question why home services stores continue to sell defective products. The expertise of my contractor has been questioned. If I, the consumer, had purchased the flooring and installed it myself, then the warranty would be null and void?

Complaint filed 7/10/14

Claim number: c1061244. Filed with Lowes

Floors are lifting and buckling through the floor that was installed. Installation was 4 years ago and problem began 6 months progressing at a rapid pace. Resolution needs to be decided. I am elderly and can not trip on these floors. Please call [protected].

Also, carefully review the claims procedure of your Pergo warranty. In my case, Pergo was requiring an inspection by a third-party laminate flooring inspection company of my Pergo Presto brand laminate flooring as part of their claims process, which sounds reasonable and most consumers would allow the inspection to happen, believing the end-result will be a repair or replacement of the defective flooring at Pergo's expense, however, this inspection is not described in the Pergo Presto Limited 25-year Residential Warranty, although it is a part of Pergo warranty for other Pergo brands, including Pergo Simple Renovations. Applicable statutes of the UCC and the federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, a federal law passed by Congress in 1975, governing commercial transactions and warranties, generally provides that warranties constitute a promise by a manufacturer or seller to the buyer, that is relied upon by the buyer in making a decisions to purchase a particular product, and so it becomes part of the sales contract between the parties. Having no prior experience with Pergo brand laminate flooring, my decision to purchase Pergo Presto laminate flooring was predicated on the Pergo warranty, which again, does not expressly provide for inspection. It is therefore unfair, unlawful and a breach of the sales contract for Pergo to impose a claims procedure that isn't set out in the written warranty, nor disclosed at the time of purchase. Pergo therefore has no right to require an inspection as part of its claims process, which I'm aware from having read a number of online complaint boards, they use as a tool to deny claims. I believe Pergo's persistent denial of warranty claims was a catalyst for the class action law suit that was decided in favor of complainants in 2009.

I can sympathize with all of the above comments as I'm also dealing with a quality issue involving Pergo laminate flooring I purchased on clearance at Home Depot in November 2011. I replaced a 5-year old TrafficMaster laminate flooring with Pergo only because the surface of the TrafficMaster was smooth and therefore slippery. A few weeks after installation of the Pergo, I started noticing heaving/buckling between planks and a waviness in the floor, which was unappealing to look at, but alos presented an underfoot hazard. I don't have any discernable level of moisture in my basement and there is sufficient perimeter gap to allow the floor to 'float", so I attribute the problems to a defect in the Pergo laminate itself. I sent a certified letter with photos to Pergo with a copy addressed to Home Depot, informing them of the problem with the flooring. A representative from Home Depot, Sherita Terry (email: SHERITA_T_TERRY@homedepot.com), contacted me on receipt of my letter to discuss the matter and see if she could be of any assistance, but It's been almost 30 days since receipt of my letter and so far no reply from Pergo. I'd heard that Pergo routinely denies warranty claims, blaming the problem with it's flooring on improper installation or other condition, which they will try to prove with an inspection by one of their so-called experts. I knew before sending my letter that Pergo was involved in a class action law suit several years ago, where they attimantly denied warranty claims over their fault product and gave customers the run around, so their lack of response comes as no surprise to me. In my case, the problem with the Pergo flooring was discovered within Home Depot's 90-day period for product returns, so I should have been able to return the product to the store for a refund, right?. The problem is that taking up 500 sq. ft. of installed laminate flooring is no easy task. While I believe Pergo, as the manufacturer of the flooring, is solely responsible for the problems I'm experiencing, and not Home Depot who merely retails the product, they have remained silent in the matter which tells me they're not interested in resolving the matter. I'm going to allow the clock to run down on the 30-day certified letter, as required under Massachusetts Consumer Protection Law, Chapter 93A, and then file a suit in small claims court. As another poster suggested, you can easily file a complaint online against Pergo with the BBB and also the NC Dept. of Justice at http://www.ncdoj.gov/complaint.aspx . Filing complaints with these agencies may result in a response from Pergo, and a resolution to the problem, since it's unlikely Pergo will ignore an inquiry from these agencies. If these agencies receive enough complaints against Pergo of a similar nature, they'll take action in the interest of consumer protection.

Hire a Independent Inspector.

I have the exact same problem with the Pergo that I had installed through Home Depot two years ago. For five months it looked great, then the cracking, buckling, spacing, and, at the edges began. We had a moisture barrier backing laid down before the laminate went down on the floor, had a moisture test, etc. and still all these problems are occurring all over the house. It is a nightmare. We spent over $6, 000 on this flooring throughout the house, and it looks horrible. Pergo is pure junk, and I'd rather have a dirt floor than this garbage. We are so disappointed; we saved for years to afford this flooring, and now would have been better off just getting carpet again. Home Depot was no help either. No one ever explained a six month warranty; I was told it was a 25 year warranty and no one explained the limitations. I contacted Pergo and had the same reaction; sent a person out with a moisture testing device and told me I had moisture in the floor and that was what caused the problem. The reason we bought Pergo was courtesy of their FALSE advertising and felonious misrepresentation. The advertisements (which are no longer shown) had a big Great Dane galloping around and across the floor; their whole spiel was how tough and durable it was. That was precisely why we bought it; alleged durability and beauty. Well it had the beauty all right, but the advertised durability is a joke...unless we got a defective product. If there are more people out there with the same issue I say we file a class action lawsuit, no matter how long it takes. I'm tired of companies like Home Depot and Pergo taking advantage of consumers hard earned dollars...including my own...and getting away with fraudulent misrepresentation and false advertising. We were totally duped, and we're not done yet. DO NOT BUY PERGO and run from HOME DEPOT!