Dunlop Flooring

Do not allow anyone from Dunlop Flooring into your home without a witness. Based on my experience, the handling of product 830406 was unsafe and unprofessional. I purchased these Luxury Vinyl Planks, which gapped and shrank across multiple properties. The first assessor, a Territory Sales Representative, confirmed in front of a witness that the flooring was defective. He declined an opportunity to inspect my other affected properties, stating he was satisfied that the product from the same batches was defective.

A second assessment was scheduled, and 3 representatives arrived instead of the 2 advised, including the Technical Manager and State Sales Manager. Despite the first assessor’s conclusion, the second visit produced a very different outcome. During this visit, an adhesive sample was collected in a urine specimen jar and handled without gloves and used scrapers. A removed plank was reinstalled using adhesive from a jar labelled “Three Threes Apple Sauce”. SafeWork NSW has issued a regulatory response in relation to this matter.

The Technical Manager stated the adhesive sample would be sent to “Nexus Laboratory” for FTIR testing. No laboratory report or FTIR results were provided in the final report. I’ve been unable to identify any laboratory by that name.

The Technical Manager’s report contradicted the first assessment and attributed the issue to installation. It relied on an installation guide dated 17 August 2020, which does not appear in the public domain, unlike other editions. No compatibility testing between the mandated hard-set adhesive and product 830406 was done as confirmed by Dunlop Flooring, and repeated requests for dimensional stability reports were not fulfilled.

Separately, the Retail Partner advised in writing that the issue was product-related, directly contradicting the Technical Manager’s conclusions. The Territory Sales Representative identified a defective product, the Technical Manager attributed the issue to installation, and the Retail Partner acknowledged a product fault.

Attempts to escalate the matter locally and to leadership within Victoria PLC, did not lead to a resolution raising serious questions about oversight and accountability. Formal reports have been shared with Regulators, including FOI records.

The handling of this matter raises serious concerns about accountability and whether product 830406 met reasonable expectations under Australian Consumer Law.

We had Dunlop frontier floating floorboards installed over a tiled floor in 2020 because they were described as a quality Australian product with a solid guarantee. Within a few months adjacent floor boards started moving relative to each other as the tongue in groove started to break down and split - eventually dirt would build up under the floor as boards lifted. We had a flooring expert look at the situation and he advised that he had seen the same issue with Dunlop hybrid floating floorboards and many other locations. When we approached both Dunlop and the Installer about the warranty they both blamed the other party. Dunlop said that the installer should never have siliconed the edge of the floor to the kitchen kickboards. It should be noted that the silicon was only applied in the kitchen area & that we had over 100 square meters of floating floor installed and the tongue & groove problem happened in multiple areas where there was no silicone applied. The installer insisted that they had done the installation in accordance with the Dunlop instructions. We have just removed & replaced the product at our own expense and I would recommend not installing Dunlop hybrid floating floorboards - their warranty is worthless