Specialty Forest Products inc

BUYER BEWARE – DECEPTIVE BUSINESS PRACTICE I don’t typically like to write bad reviews but we felt like victims of a deceptive business practice that cost us THOUSANDS of dollars so we want to warn other potential customers from falling into this trap. We used Specialty Forest Products to source 5” Character Live Sawn Solid White Oak flooring. The actual product that we received was nowhere close to the samples. We know that there can be some variation in the wood, but the samples should be a reasonable representation of the actual product. However, the supplier never even warned us that the samples would not or may not look like the actual product. Not when we spoke with the sales representative over the course of many months, not when they told us there were no returns because these were not a “stock material” and certainly not when they sent us the invoice. We even shared the pictures with some industry professionals who confirmed that they believed we had been duped. It felt like they sent us the two best looking samples but we really received low character grade wood with our actual order. Please see the pictures and judge for yourself. We paid $8.25/sq ft, which was a HUGE premium (40-70%) to what we saw from other suppliers but we were willing to pay that based on the samples and pictures that were provided to us. A quick online search shows 5” character live sawn solid white oak for $4.79/sq ft to $5.89/sq ft from 5 different suppliers in the top search results alone. Even when including shipping, that still comes out to approximately $6.00/sq ft on average from these 5 suppliers. We trusted Specialty Forest Products because they had good reviews. Maybe those positive reviews are from contractors and not homeowners. I’m not sure. In hindsight, I now see a lot of 5 star google reviews with no write-ups, which is suspect. If the samples were representative of the true product, we could have made a decision to go with a different wood or grade. We could have even purchased 5” select grade white oak for much less, which was quoted at $6.30/sq ft at the time. It’s an awful feeling to be scammed out of thousands of our hard-earned savings. We spent a lot of time contemplating these floors and decided to splurge since we would enjoy them with our growing family for many years to come. It’s not like paint, where we could easily change it. Every time I see the floor now, it will be a constant reminder of all the money we lost. It’s a tough lesson but I hope this review at least prevents even one unsuspecting customer from being taken advantage of. Please make sure you do your due diligence before making any payments. Make sure that the product matches the samples you received. Don’t agree to any unreasonable return policy until you see all of the actual product first. Don’t pay a premium just because you think you’re getting a superior product based on the samples from this company, we made that mistake.