This is obviously even more vital when purchasing anything 'natural' like oak flooring, which can respond/react to any changes in its surrounding conditions when forced to do so because its dimensions are directly related to its moisture content.
Many companies prefer to just bombard any potential customer with a 'sell...sell...sell...' attitude without providing any relevant information. They 'gloss over' most truths and facts that you need to know, and simply focus on special offer prices, free delivery (usually added to the price anyway) and things like that, just to make themselves appear more attractive as your supplier.
Many will also tell you 'anything' to secure the sale and take your money... and these are usually the last who want to help when something goes wrong on site with your floor.
At Oak Floors Online, we provide as much information as possible BEFORE you buy your oak flooring, so that you're aware of the potential challenges before they happen and not just afterwards. We see this as being really important for a good working relationship between ourselves and our customers, and our attitude is 'better to lose a sale by telling the truth than secure it and it goes wrong'.
When there are on-site problems with any oak floor, some really bad things happen, for you the customer, us the supplier, and the industry itself...
- The oak flooring will require costly remedial work
- The customer usually blames the product, no matter what the actual reason for failure is
- Someone will have to pay for the work required
- The whole oak flooring industry is damaged
Oak flooring is a natural product and always remains being a natural product, even when installed within a finished oak floor.
An oak plank, whether it be solid oak or engineered oak flooring, will remain natural and hygroscopic (water absorbent) throughout its lifetime and usage, so instead of steering away from that fact... we actually emphasise it.
Given the chance, it will either absorb moisture or lose it, depending on the conditions that it's forced to endure by the property owner.
Many people want to buy a natural oak floor but don't want it to behave like a natural oak floor.
Worse still are the people who won't accept that it's a natural oak floor when it responds to the changes in the surrounding conditions that are usually created by that same person or persons.
At Oak Floors Online we pride ourselves in the information we provide about oak flooring in general and not just ours. If our product does not meet the requirements of your particular situation then we'll tell you that.
Sometimes we'll even recommend a different supplier in our effort to help you find the right oak flooring for your needs.
At Oak Floors Online we believe that honesty and transparency is massively important when selling high quality oak flooring, and it is our quest to lead the industry in this way.