Legal advice for complaints about PVC flooring

Questioner

Hello, A few days ago, a new PVC floor was laid by a furniture store. This floor is from a normal, reputable brand and we were advised in the store that PVC floors in particular have a high wear resistance and scratch resistance (handy with a young family). Now the floor has been laid and we have made the following observations: - In many places there are gaps between the PVC tiles. As a result, the waterproofing is no longer applicable. - In other places there is a raised edge. Sometimes you can press it in, so there is probably no glue underneath, or at least it is not attached. Such an edge is of course also extra sensitive to wear. - Already big scratches in the floor. These scratches even occur with vacuuming! The suction nozzle of the vacuum cleaner has no metal parts. Now that we are a few days further, there are already big scratches spread all over the floor. We reported these problems to the furniture store the next morning after installation. They also came by to look at the problems. However, the problems were greatly trivialized: the floor could supposedly move (note that it is a permanently glued plastic floor!), that is why seams would be necessary, the floor tiles would not all be equally straight, that is why they cannot be laid straight (they are factory-straight, equally sized tiles), a PVC floor would actually not be suitable for a family with small children (while we had discussed this when purchasing, in fact the children were with us! Then it was actually recommended.) As far as we are concerned, the floor was simply poorly laid and it is a poor quality material that scratches very quickly. The furniture store offered as a compromise to seal the seams with a grout (the color of which is black, but slightly different from the floor). And possibly to treat the floor with a polish in the hope of making the floor more scratch-resistant (that polish was not initially necessary when purchasing). Now he says about the polish that the floor does become less. What do you recommend we do in this situation? Kind regards,

Lawyer

You do not have to agree to the solutions offered if this results in a floor that you did not have in mind and that therefore does not meet the expectations that you could have based on the purchase agreement. This also includes promises from sellers. On the other hand, you should consider that demanding a new floor to replace the first one free of charge will not be easy without the intervention of a lawyer. This is a mixed purchase and construction agreement and it is possible that mistakes were made during installation. It is very important that you make your (legal) position clear quite quickly. If necessary, I would be happy to help you write a letter.