Is it just me?

[upthewall]

I think you have to come to the conclusion that the manufacturers really don't care anymore. Their reps are apathetic at best. The quality of the product is certainly suffering. It won't be long before all of the wallpaper is going to be manufactured in Asia anyway (Hence the Norwall/Patton article). Perhaps that's what they want. It is really sad a companies with rich histories like York and others are willing to give up on American quality and pride so easily.

A very wise man once told me that the definition of a professional is not somebody who doesn't make mistakes; only god can do that. A professional is the person who admits his or her mistake and then makes it right.

Given the amount of contempt at which they treat paperhangers.
I don't know if any of the manufacturers or reps ever read this forum ( I really wish they would).

If given the chance....

I would like to remind them that the longer your head stays buried in the sand the better the chance what is left exposed is going to be kicked.

[HangingInThere]

As a professional installer I could care less about pre-pasted goods. In fact, when they first began to appear on the market they were fraught with difficulties...which would be another thread. But what I was hearing back when they first began to appear was there was a paradigm shift in the works and manufacturers were targeting the DIY market.

Well, with the DIY market folks are not as knowledgeable as those of us who do this for a living. For many Do It Yourselfers I believe it's akin to buying a diamond. Hopefully, you do that once in your life and you wind up relying on the expertise of the professional. The clarity and acceptability of a stone, just as with wallpaper is not necessarily clear to most DIYs. Add to that the time investment of the DIYer installing and then having to remove and do it all over...I would submit that the majority will "settle" rather than go through the unfamiliar machinations involved with challenging and redoing.

If the DIY market is the mainstay of the manufacturers, then I guess I can see where this is all going. Unless we're going to be handling custom papers from service minded conscientious manufacturers, we'll be getting someone else's returns on a regular basis. This certainly appears to be what is happening. The results are down days costing us money. The manufacturers pass the liability to us with no recourse on our part to cover our lost time and expenses. Most state that their only liability is to replace the wallcovering. And, they want the "defective" returned to...what? Recycle? LOL