Bought a (what I think, is) decent carpet and underlay for the bedroom we are almost finished with decorating.
We went for 10mm underlay and the carpet was the deepest of the 3 options in that style that they had, so quite thick.

We had it fitted on Monday and it looks fine, but I was looking at the edge where it meets the wardrobe (just being nosy) and felt a gripper pin poking through the carpet.

I’ve rang the shop as they fitted the wrong colour door strip, and mentioned the gripper poking through. She said they’d get it sorted, but seemed a bit non-plussed by the whole thing.
I went round the edge of the room last night and you can feel the pins poking through almost the whole way round.

My wife was of the opinion that you never stand at the edge of the carpet and they are probably all like that, but you never get close enough to notice. But I’m not sure that’s right.

Gonna ring them in a bit, so just wondered if anyone knew about this kinda thing to let me know if I’m just being fussy or not.
I did a quick Google last night and quite a few people were in the same boat, with most replies saying ‘you’ve obviously bought crap carpet, what do you expect?’, with one of two carpet fitters saying they have used the wrong gripper and it should be changed.

Definitely not right.

They need to change it!

they have used the wrong gripper and it should be changed.

Hmmmm. Arse.
You’d have thought that going to a well established local independent carpet place (rather than using a big ‘we don’t care’ chain) would at least be a starting point to get the job done properly.

So far the only bits they could really get wrong, they have got wrong it would seem! We confirmed 3 times with them the colour of the door strip and they managed to get that wrong. At least the carpet is the one that we ordered!

I just rang them and he said they’d have a look at it and sort it, but didn’t say what ‘sorting it’ would consist of. I suspect they are going to whack the sticky out pins down and leave it at that, rather than pull up the whole carpet and replace the grippers with the correct ones.

Starting to get fed up of using ‘local’ services to get jobs done, paying good money and more often than not ending up with a crap service.

Many of these places use contracted fitters rather than their own staff. Our fitter left the existing grippers in place when he laid the carpet when we had paid for new. His didn’t give a toss as he thought the existing ones were OK. No doubt he charged the carpet company. It was small value but short cuts are no surprise in these scenarios.

Yes they have used the wrong gripperrods you can get short / medium / and long pin gripper .

Medium is ok for 90% of carpets
dont let them bash the pins down as that will lock the carpet on to them and cause damage if you ever take it up to decorate .

Flooring fitter for the last 35 years

Many of these places use contracted fitters rather than their own staff

This.

Friend of mine used Bristol Carpets for his flat and the fitters they arranged were shocking.

I had to supervise them as he was away. They used his vacuum cleaner to clean up all the bits until it overheated and broke (the guy was worried, fortunately it started to work after cooling down and I pointed out they should go down to their van and fetch their Henry).

They trimmed the doors for £15 each but made a right mess of them. Fortunately the doors were being replaced anyway, well not the outside one.

I had all the old aluminium door joints stacked up by the door to take to the scrap dealer along with some of my metal waste, I noticed after they had gone that they had taken them. (i took all the old carpets up and the old edging strips and put them out of the way).

They left me a bag of carpet off-cuts to dispose of which I threw into the boot of my car, but had to have it up on the top edge of the back seats. It wasnt until I pulled it out I relaised they had put a load of gripper rod off-cuts in there and not bashed in the pins so they left nice rips in my leather seats.

trout, when I spoke to him on the phone he sounded surprised that they were poking through; this is the shop front blokie not the fitter.
I can’t remember his exact words, but he said something like it was a medium length gripper that should be suitable for most carpets.
I can’t remember the brand of the carpet; the range was called ‘excellence’ I think and they did ‘bronze’, ‘silver’ and ‘gold’ thicknesses. We went for the thickest option and it was about £25/m^2.

I dropped the key off with them this morning and they are going round to sort it out today, so don’t have too much hope/chance of stopping them if they are going to whack the pins down.

Annoyingly, the last carpet we had fitted was from a place near us who did 3 rooms for us in our old house. We replaced the hall/stairs landing carpet to freshen the place up for selling and bought a dirt cheap carpet. That had no issues with bits poking through, so it must be the quality of the fitting, rather than the carpet itself to a large extent.
We were going to use the same place, but when we went round there it looked like they had closed up. We’ve since found out that they have just moved to different premises.

I need to trim the door down this weekend as it is now a tight fit agains the carpet.
Any suggestions for working out how much to remove, trout?! I was gonna run a pencil along the bottom of the door along the carpet and cut just below that. I don’t want to remove too much and have an unnecessary gap, but by the same token I don’t want to trim a bit, re-fit and find it’s not enough and take it back off to take a bit more off etc.
The hinges are those rising butt ones, so the door lifts as it opens.

cb, I know that one of the fitters is the son of the shop owners but I don’t think he is the one who fitted the carpet. I think the whole thing is a family run thing though, rather than the fitting being subbed out to contractors.

andyl – Member

They used his vacuum cleaner to clean up all the bits

Hmmmmm. My wife was home first on the day of fitting and said there was fluff and mess everywhere. She had just finished hoovering it all up when i got there.
They’d just left it and made no attempt to actually tidy up.

The more I think about it, the worse it gets…..!