"Advantage have lied and taken my money without providing the decking I purchased. According to the third person I have spoken with in two days, the order I placed 3 weeks ago cannot be filled because the facility in North Carolina is out of one of the two decking types I ordered. Because the order has free shipping associated with it, they will not ship from two separate facilities. However, I was never told that the NC mill is out of the material. No one called me to relay this information. No one emailed me. I have had radio silence for nearly three weeks...and they took my money. The person I just spoke with told me that according to their notes, I spoke with someone two days after ordering and they informed me that the wood was out of stock. That is untrue. Further, why would they not contact me subsequently to ask what I wanted to do about the order that was in limbo. Three weeks of no contact, having taken my money. Utterly disgusting."

"Worse worse worse company ever. DO NOT purchase any IPE or Teak Wood from these guys. over 42k sent in the ordered waited 2 months, excuses and excuses, and when we inspected the order, it truly look like dog S***** if you know what I mean. What a waste of time. DO NOT waste your time and money. Amex is taking care of this, but unfortunately my time and project is not taking care of thanks to their absolutely unprofessional work. I hope we get compensated for this. Will see."

"Spent over $13k on IPE deck tiles and a lot of them were damaged! I contacted the company right away and the manager asked for more photos. I sent them everything they asked and never got a response back from them. BAD COMPANY. STAY AWAY!

Waste of money!!"

"I ordered paint from them and my order never shipped. After more than a week of waiting, I called them, only to find out 1 bottle out of 3 was back ordered, so they decided not to ship my order. I asked them to ship the 2 bottles that were in stock and ship the 3rd when it came in (in 2 weeks according to Jeff, their account rep).

ONE MONTH later...no word about my back order. I found a larger bottle on their website, emailed Jeff, asked if we could cancel the back order and just order the larger bottle instead. No response.

Called the customer service # about 4 days later. Yes, it's in stock. No, can't do a credit, I need to talk to Jeff about that.

Finally talk to Jeff. Sure we can do that. Not sure if it's in stock. I'll let you know. A week and a half later...no word from Jeff. I email him, 2 days later, he sends me an invoice and thanks me for my order.

I will never order from them again. NEVER!"

"These guys may be a good company. Because the ship using Tforcetrucking I will not buy from them. They are the absolute worst company in the United States and they are owned by a canadian company. Just look at their reviews."

"Great people, excellent service. Great products. If you are looking for clear lumber maybe not the place for you. If you want beautifully figured lumber and own a planer this is your place. They do sell decking and rain screen. I have never had an issue. I have been using them since they opened. "

"Arrogant stuff sends you Grade B material but charges you for premium. Awful company! Terrible customer service! Never ever do business with these people!"

"We bought a large order of IPE lumber from Advantage last summer to redo our deck railings. We got samples and they were great in our dry and challenging climate in Denver. The samples tested very dry with a moisture meter. The almost $3000 order arrived via truck and it was immediately noticeable that some of the larger railings and 4x4 posts had splits and cracking. We notified the company and they dodged any responsibility for this claiming it was natural for wood to split. It appears that Advantage is shipping some of its wood without proper drying. When questioned the sales manager dodged the question of whether they kiln dried the wood... Some of our order has no problem and the IPE wood is beautiful but difficult to work with since it is very hard. Don't expect any help from Advantage if you have problems with your order. They don't offer ANY advice on how to repair cracks or fill in the many splits in the posts. They repeat their defence that the wood is structurally sound. So their high prices are not backed by quality service. BEWARE OF DOING BUSINESS WITH ADVANTAGE There are other better options
After spending some time on the phone with the Advantage Lumber sales manager, we were able to come to an amicable settlement which seemed fair to me. I appreciate that they listened to my complaints and responded to those issues. In the meantime, I highly recommend you consider using Advantage for IPE wood. IPE wood is extremely dense and hard to work with but the end result is a long-lasting product. You need patience, very sharp drillbits and saw blades. And every hole needs to be drilled.
Good luck with your project."

"I purchased decking from advantage lumber almost 2 years ago. The staff is very helpful and the product speaks for itself. I had my decking with in a week and would highly recommend this company!!"

"After looking at reviews I saw on Google, Facebook Houzz and other sites I have to admit I was taken aback when seeing such a difference on this site. I called Advantage to order our Ipe and asked about these reviews. Advantage explained how some of the reviews on this page they have actually been able to prove they are competitors of theirs. Its because of this I have a review on every page above and this one. We took advantage of the 4th of July sale, wood was delivered 4 days later and we plan to install this weekend. The wood is beautiful and our rep Neal was a great help. Thank you Advantage."

"I ordered from the Sarasota store, expected to wait over 3- 4 weeks, and it was here in 2.
Kathy worked with me on the order, making suggestions about clips etc which was very helpful.
The wood was packed well, and my contractors are loving it. Gorgeous !
"

"I did not have a good start in the beginning because I had a miscommunication issue with one of their staff and she was gone. After proactively following up with the sales department, the management Jon Fletcher quickly stepped up and followed through my order. I was very please with his professionalism and 'miss it and fix it' attitude throughout the whole purchase process. My order was delayed because of the Brazil protest and the containers were held up for really long time. Jon took time to explain to me and he offered me a generous upgrade to my wood because I need the wood for my project asap.

I will detail the upcoming details about the wood quality and shipping delivery. Stay tune. "

"We have ordered Ipe many times from our local lumber yard. After them being out of stock for the last 3 months we decided to give Advantage a try. I have to admit due to some of the reviews seen here we were very skeptical but decided to give them a try. One thing that stood out was the honesty. They told us up front the issues with supply from Brazil and that it would be about 3 to 4 week lead time. The wood arrived a little before the 3 week point and we were amazed by the quality compared to what we had seen coming from our local lumber yard. I never write reviews but after reading what some had to say on this web page felt compelled to tell our story. Thank You Advantage and thank you Shawn."

"I've ordered lumber from Advantage Trim and Lumber many, many times and the experience has always been pretty dicey. In the end the terrible customer service has completely canceled out any savings I would have gained over my local distributor. They consistently forget items on my order, they ship late and often give me the run around when I ask for updates. My last order of about ~2000 linear feet of 5/4 x 4 ipe decking had about 380 feet of unusable lumber. Milling defects like boards that had 1/8" difference in width, poorly filled wormholes, huge surface checks. I've also had to wait 6 weeks for an order to arrive, causing a serious delay in a project and some very angry customers. All in all, it's not worth the hassle to order with these guys, especially for large orders. They just can't seem to get it right."

"Initially, I was extremely unhappy because I was not notified before I made my purchase that the shipping company they used (ABF) wouldn't give less than an 8-hour time window on the day of shipment and would require my customer to hand unload an 850 lbs pallet themselves.

But, after speaking to several people, I finally got ahold of the sales manager who was extremely helpful, arranged for a lift gate and minimized the delivery time window. Although my initial experience was frustrating, their customer service came through and helped me "save face" with my customer. Thank you!

I didn't rate the shipping process very high because the shipping terms weren't made clear before I made my purchase. But, they did correct the error and it ended up working out in the end."