The tretford Wear Warranty Explained

tretford has an enviable track record of over 30 years in contract installations all over the world. Most are familiar with the testaments to performance tretford has received from specifiers and end-users in both the institutional and private sectors everywhere. It has been widely praised by installers and by facilities and maintenance managers who have worked with tretford for many years.

It is often described as a “trouble-free carpet”.

• It has excellent appearance retention
• It is easily installed
• Seams cannot ravel or breakdown
• It is easily maintained

In summary, tretford performs as one of the best contract carpets on the market should.

Following a request from our Australian distributor, we now offer, with admittedly some reluctance, a 5 year limited wear warranty on tretford. Full terms and conditions are available from your local distributor or agent. The terms of the warranty mirror those available with other carpets.

The average service life of tretford is far longer than 5 years and often far longer than 10 years so to understand our reluctance and reason for limiting the term to 5 years, some further definition of “wear” is first required. As with all product warranties, it is vital that the small print be read so that the true meaning and value of a warranty is understood.

Under the terms of all the carpet warranties we have ever seen:-

• “Wear” is defined in terms of percentage fibre loss by weight
• This is , in theory, measurable but is limited in value as a total measure of carpet performance
• It is questionable whether, in practice, percentage fibre loss can accurately be measured

We believe that these facts are not widely understood and so wear warranties are somewhat misleading.

What important factors are not covered by this definition of “wear”?

• Resilience
• Appearance retention
• Carpet structure and integrity
• Ease and cost of maintenance
• Technical Issues (static, fire, acoustic ratings, colour fastness, etc.)
• Environmental issues (use of renewable resources, environmental manufacturing etc.)

If assessed using the definition of “wear” stated in the warranties, there is no doubt that synthetic fibres are hard wearing. Compared to carpets manufactured from natural, staple fibres such as wool and, in tretford’s case, goat hair, the amount of shedding and fibre loss over the lifetime of, say a synthetic tufted carpet is less.

For this reason, wear warranties are popular among the manufacturers of carpets made with synthetic face fibres, particularly BCF (bulk continuous filament) fibres. They successfully promote wear warranties as a measure, which should inspire specifier and end-user confidence in synthetic fibres. In reality they often distract attention from the real issues, i.e. what will the carpet look like after 5, 10 or 15 years, how will it perform technically and how much will it cost to maintain over this period?

If the performance of tretford is compared with that of a synthetic fibre carpet on the basis of fibre loss alone (“wear”), tretford will often lose. But if you compare the appearance and cost of maintaining tretford with that of a carpet made from synthetic fibre, after 5, 10 or 15 years, the results will be quite different. tretford’s success and the testimonials of end-users all over the world are undeniable proof of this.

It is our belief that the importance of percentage fibre loss (“wear”) has been overstated. If it were true, expensive natural fibre carpets would no longer be the carpets of choice in the world’s leading hotels and tretford would not be the international success story that it is today, still, after 30 years.

Wear warranties are poor indicators of true carpet quality. Unfortunately, there is no broadly accepted, honest, scientific and measurable method of assessing appearance retention. But what tretford has is a proven, not a promised, performance track record second to none.

We do not warrant that tretford will never wear out but we do warrant that it will look good and perform better, longer.