| Address: | Chennai, Tamil Nadu |
This is my unhappy experience with buying and installing Kajaria vitrified tiles in my flat.
The company makes some claims, and in my limited experience, certain tiles do not meet those claims. Your experience may of course vary.
The tiles I bought, I believe, come under the Eternity HD branding (digital glazed vitrified tiles), named 'Vulci Beige’, 60x60cm, Glossy, and are sold for a little over 100rs/sft (not cheap, right?). I have installed these tiles in my 800sqft flat, around 7 months back.
These are some of the marketing claims for Kajaria digital glazed vitrified tiles;
1. Protective “Diamond Shield" Coating
2. High Scratch and abrasion resistance
With regards to 1 & 2 (please take particular note of terms used), I would like to inform all that after 7 months, my tiles are mostly scratched. This apparently happened because of the usage of a wooden stool during my flat’s woodwork. I suppose those claims only work with furniture having plastic caps on their feet, like for… any other cheap tiles.
The other major problem is what looks like smudge marks on most tiles. It becomes clearly visible when I view the reflection of light sources from above. It appears as if the gloss is wearing off, much like you would expect to see in high footfall malls, after several years. I have absolutely no idea how this could have happened with 'premium quality' tiles.
I raised a strongly worded complaint with Kajaria, and they sent a couple guys from their quality check department.
As for the scratches, they picked on the wooden stool usage and said that entire fault is with that. I ask, if I have to treat my 'premium tiles' like egg shells, why did I pay a premium price for them, especially given the claims above?
As for the smudges, they said this has never been seen before, and asked me to use a heavy duty tile cleaner called Endura, which they promised will clear the smudges. It did not help in the slightest, as I expected of course.
After that visit, I tried contacting them again, but they have chosen to ignore all my mails. I am not naive, and I expected this kind of behaviour, as I know there is nothing they can possibly do now, except claim that it is entirely my fault.
3. Natural Random Variation - Like Original Marble
It is claimed that these tiles have random pattern, like natural marble. In the case of Vulci Beige, I can confirm that around 5 tiles have random pattern (like marble), with the rest of them, <U>just exact copies</U>. And, the company does not even ensure that each box of 4 tiles, contains unique pattern tiles. As you can expect, the tilers did not care one bit to ensure that same pattern tiles do not appear side by side. So much for the natural marble look.
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Overall, my feeling is that these 'premium tiles' are mostly just like any other cheaper tiles, except that these companies are smart enough to give special look/patterns (marble, granite, wood, etc.), only on such tiles. Then they slap on some nice sounding 'features' to suck customers in.
So in my humble opinion, you are basically paying extra mainly for the look/pattern, and not for some added durability/quality, which you can expect even with tiles half the price. So ignore all marketing claims (they are mostly bull), and simply choose tiles which suit your taste.
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