Blue Ridge Lumber Company — Local services in Fair Lawn

I went to Blue Ridge Lumber, because their prices were competitive, and I prefer to not got to the giant chain stores if I can help it. I was replacing my deck and was purchasing about 700 square feet of Trex Enhance decking, about $5000 worth of material. For the initial purchase I dealt with a salesman named John, he was very helpful and I thought that I had made a good choice of suppliers for building materials. When the delivery came, I was impressed, my driveway is narrow and curvy, and the retaining wall was about 6 inches higher than the fork lift could reach, the driver helped me unload every board by hand, he was great. Unfortunately this is where my positive experience ended. I had miscalculated the number of 20' boards I needed and had to order two more. It may have been just a coincidence, but now that I was only making a $120 order, the great service I had received when I was spending thousands of dollars was now nonexistent. John told me they had them in stock in their other yard and would have them transferred up, well, the boards they had were Trex Select, NOT Trex Enhance, something I did not notice until after I had picked up the boards and brought them home. So I loaded them back up and returned them, and asked them to order the correct ones. Somehow that order was not placed and John went on vacation. I was running up against my dead line and there was a gaping hole in my deck that was both unpleasant to look at and also created a safety hazard. So I had them make the order, again. They said it would be in in a couple days. A couple days came and went, I called, no John. The guy I spoke to said for some reason the order was placed with a different supplier that delivered on a different day. So now I'm really running out of time and patience. I told them to cancel the order. I had been jerked around for too long, I was two weeks beyond when I needed to have the deck done, all because the people at Blue Ridge Lumber were either too incompetent or simply couldn't be bothered to put the same amount of effort into a $120 order as they put into a $5000 order. I called another lumber yard that was a little further away. They had the boards I needed delivered when they said they would be there, and treated as good or better than Blue Ridge had on my initial order. I wish that had been the end of my poor experience with Blue Ridge Lumber, alas, it was not. When placing my initial order, I bought an extra board or two of every length, because if there was a miscalculation or a bad cut, I didn't want to be stuck waiting on a board or two to be ordered. I asked John when placing the order if I would be able to return any unused boards at the completion of the project. He told me that it would be up to the distributor, but that it shouldn't be a problem. So today I called, I had 9 boards left over, about $400 worth of material, I was told that 1) the distributor would not be open until Monday so I would have to call back then and 2) there would likely be a 25-30% handling fee to return the boards. That last part, the 25-30% handling fee was never mentioned when I made my initial purchase and had clearly stated that I was buying extra with the express intent of returning any unused material. So in the end, Blue Ridge Lumber, and specifically the salesman John, cost me an added week to two weeks on my project and failed to mention that it would cost me likely $100 to make a $400 return. I will never use Blue Ridge Lumber again, nor would I recommend them to anyone, not even someone whom I...

Mr. John Pohts out of the Fair Lawn NJ branch is a real pro. He responded to my emails almost immediately, he was knowledgeable on the product lines I was interested in, he secured my order and coordinated deliver out of Ogdensburg NJ branch. The team in Ogdensburg are a first rate act as well, providing Saturday delivers with out a hitch. A couple of pieces of my order were damaged and John jumped into action and replaced them with no questions. Give my order was rather small as compared to say what a contractor would be ordering, it didn't matter as I still received the red carpet treatment. Organization's let Blue Ridge Lumber and the pro's they employ are the reason why I will continue to avoid the big box store nightmares when ever possible. From a Happy...

Avoid this place. I had deck boards delivered from this place and the driver who delivered them ended up driving all the way in my side yard (on grass) which is shared between my neighbor and I. He left huge tire marks on the grass, but not only that the way he off loaded was by un securing the pallets from the truck and driving the truck forward very fast. By doing this all the boards went flying down in the side yard and I had to spend an hour to clean up. One advice to company: Don't hire people who doesn't want to do their job. And if they mess up have guts to come back and fix it. I spent hour of my time in -20F temp to fix the mess and had to spend another $500 to fix...