Dear Mr & Mrs Schreiter

 

I have been in contact with our head office after receiving your letter dated 5^th September and they have asked me to reiterate clearly our position in this matter.

 

We have never accepted liability for the cracks in the stairs that appeared when fitting the stair runners. We have installed your carpet in exactly the same manner using the same method of fixing that we use for every carpet installation we undertake. As I explained when I inspected the installation the cracks must have been there before we arrived and had been poorly filled and painted over by your builder or decorator and fixing the gripper caused the cracks to become visible. When fitting stair runner’s paint does sometimes crack due to the fact we have to nail the gripper on the stairs to hold the carpet securely but the wood itself doesn’t split if the staircase is in good condition. We haven’t used any extra force installing your carpet yet the stairs in your case have cracked due to somebody else’s poor workmanship which you are now trying to hold us responsible for. Our fitter could not have noticed this in advance as any weakness in the timber had been painted over and was not visible to us.

 

We did offer as a gesture of good will, but not an admission of guilt, to contribute to the cost of repairing the bottom riser but we then received a quote to rebuild your staircase that was not as agreed and wholly unreasonable. We therefore withdrew our goodwill gesture as you clearly had not taken on board any of our points but had decide that we should be held liable for others poor performance which we will not.

 

In a situation like this if we had to return to re fit a carpet after a customer has had their builder rectify their work we would normally make a charge for this service but in your case we did offer to do this free of charge as a good will gesture but we did ask that you paid £700 of your balance that was due on the day of fitting and the remaining £100 on re fitting of the carpet so you had extra security to confirm we would be back as promised. This was not acceptable and your counter offer still required us to pay £400 towards the cost of rectifying other peoples faulty workmanship which for the reasons stated before was totally unacceptable and then you requested your deposit back and we take away the carpet we have had cut to fit you home to your order which was also unacceptable.

 

You did not respond or acknowledge our last correspondence and your refusal to accept that anybody else is to blame has left us with no alternative other than to seek recovery of the balance owing to our company and the invoice was raised rather than taking legal action immediately. If you do start proceedings against Mr Carpet before we take the next step to recover the outstanding debt then we will defend our position and we are sure an impartial view will accept that if your stairs cracked during a normal method of carpet installation then there has to be a fault or weakness in your stairs that was not visible before we started work and as there is no other safe method of fixing carpet safely to a staircase whoever had installed your stair carpet would have fallen victim to the previous poor preparation we have been presented with.

 

Yours Truly

 

Richard Clough

 

 

 

 

Dear Mr Schreiter

 

Thank you for your email dated 8^th August of which I note your comments therein.

 

I am sorry that you find the content of my emails untruthful and menacing as right from the outset of my very first inspection with Mrs Schreiter my only stance was to be fair and analyse the cause of the complaint. If we had been responsible we would have proceeded in putting the matters right. However I feel that this is a case of the last person in (our fitters) are having to take the blame for other peoples poor workmanship and negligence brought to your attention during the installation by our fitter.

 

I would like to reiterate that Mr Carpet are keen to put right as soon as possible the taping and fitting issues however we are not willing to accept responsibility for the condition that you find the stairs in, as this is due solely to the inadequate preparation by your builder/decorator. I agreed both on my first and second visit with Mrs Schreiter that we would contribute at a reasonable cost of repair to the bottom riser of the loft flight only as gesture of good will and not as an admission of liability. As previously mentioned you received a quotation from your contractor not in keeping with our agreement but to carry out a description of works that is basically a snagging list that describes putting right matters that are not related to Mr Carpet.

 

To confirm, these matters in our experience would always have been dealt with by the builder/ decorator prior to our contracted element of our work therefore to expect us to held responsible and leaving us to pick up the bill is totally unfair. In the provided quotation it states that they would fit back the carpet and that they cannot understand why the carpet people cannot do this which is untrue as at no time did we decline to do this. In fact we offered to re-fit the carpets once the re-stitching was complete and at the same time that we would fit both stair cases where it meets the landings as we were unable on the scheduled day of fitting to complete this element as the builders has not cut off the existing stair nosing resulting in an unfinishable transition. This was offered free of charge when we returned saving you the minimum fitting charge of £90 that would normally apply to this scenario.

 

The fact remains that the damage to your stairs follows our standard installation of carpet runners of which we fit on a regular basis, to the same fitting methods with the same results yet we are still to blame without taking any of our points into consideration and therefore for you to request a deduction of £400 is not only unreasonable but totally unacceptable.

 

I do understand that you are unhappy with the current situation however I am disappointed that you have not taken on board my previous comments yet still hold our business entirely at fault. Therefore in light of this I feel that it is best that we maintain email correspondence and therefore I respectfully decline the offer to meet in person for further discussions and would seek payment of £700 without further delay.

 

Yours Truly

 

Richard Clough