M&S Carpet Carpet Purchase and Install Review

Over the weekend I had Empire Today and M&S Carpet come in and give me quotes on berber carpeting for my basement. If you recall, last year about this time I asked Empire to come out and they stood me up, this time they didn’t. (I called them only because I wanted to see their quote) They came in at a whopping $1,900 for the space whereas M&S cost only $1,000. The funny part was when the Empire salesman went through the whole ’special discount’ routine going from $3,200 all the way down to $1,900 because even he didn’t really believe in the $3,200 part. The moment he said $3,200 he immediately jumped in on himself and said “but wait, there’s a special discount of 50%” and somehow reached $1,900 (which is not 50% of $3,200, as my astute fiancée pointed out). Yeah okay buddy, nice try.

Rosemary at M&S quoted us $1050, no special one-time one-week only discount, just straight up $1050, no BS, we can come out in two days. (They’re coming on Saturday) I like working with people who don’t BS me and get to the point quickly. So, the final price was $1050 + tax for a basic berber with a 6 lb. padding for approximately 500 square feet, including moving furniture, clean up, etc. That works out to approximately $2.10 a square foot, a pretty good price for installed carpet. The carpet itself isn’t the nicest of nice stuff (it’s only $2.10/sq. ft. installed, you can’t expect the world!) but it’ll be going in the basement where I don’t think we really want super-nice carpet anyway. All it takes it one sump-pump disaster and you can kiss that carpet good-bye.

Well they came out two Saturdays ago and it took about two and a half hours to install. The guys worked efficiently, which was a plus, and cleaned up the whole place afterwards - very professional and exactly what I expected. In fact, they even repaired a bit of carpet that I had messed up but wasn’t installed by them. There’s a little 4′ x 4′ carpeted area in front of the door to the basement that had been a bit damaged by some water. We had tossed the padding because it had gotten wet (the carpet itself was fine, thankfully) and those guys just installed some new padding underneath, no questions asked (Rose had said it wouldn’t be a problem, just let them know).

There was some carpet left over and Rose told me to bring it in, tell them what sizes we wanted, and they’d make them into little rugs, no extra charge. Ultimately, I think that while we could’ve shaved a little more off the price if we kept looking and looking and looking, dealing with M&S was great and I’d certainly go back if I wanted more carpet.