When There Is a Difference of Opinion

Welcome to the new HomeStars! That's right, we launched our new-look site at HomeStars.com. One of the most exciting things about it is the soft launch of our Boston site. We'll be adding a bunch of Boston reviews in the next month, and we hope Bostonians like it! In another 35 days, we'll launch a second release with a bunch of minor bugs worked out.

I was just checking out some reviews on a company I had a positive experience with - Downtown Flooring in Toronto. A recent review was lukewarm at best, citing a number of problems and issues. Of course, the job sounded a bit more complex than the one we had done, as it included some staining. In other cases, I had to wonder whether my assessment of a fair price was the same as that reviewer's. And I realize that often many of us have no good standard to compare or assess whether a job was up to "par," whatever par is in a given specialty. For example, the company did not offer "quarter-round to match the floors". Arguably, though, they are not designers. I really don't know if it's very common that a flooring company would match the quarter-round to your floors. We painted our quarter-round.

To deal with this type of uncertainty, it looks like three things will help:

• Checklists of what to look for to assess the quality of any job, created by experts (and you). Stay tuned for this feature!

• Company responses have been an important part of HomeStars since inception. That way, we get to hear everyone's side of the story. Sometimes, it leads to further followup from the vendor.
  

• To deepen the discussion, we will of course be launching a forum section so homeowners can debate, confer, and learn more about specific issues. (Coming soon, but not before our second site release in early October.) Our Boston area community will be led by our new team member, Melanie Zoltan. Welcome aboard Melanie!
  

Labels: flooring, homestars, reviews

Posted by Andrew Goodman
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