hi becky,

I have no experience with them at all - but based on past threads can advise that the owner of this company regularly reads this forum and responds to forum members, for good or ill. With that in mind, you might want to visit your profile page and enable the email option so that if any member has a review they'd prefer to share privately, they can send it to you that way. :-)

I LOVE M. Teixeira. They did our sink and counters for our remodel in 2007 and we ordered a sink from them for this remodel (different house). Talk to Michelle. She knows everything.

Seems to me that they are the main soapstone importers in the states and every other operation gets their stone from them...which is why every other place is more expensive.

They are so expert! We just had marble tops installed down here and, although they did a good job, the templating and drainboards don't compare to the job M. Teixeira did.

I feel they are super knowledgeable and the customer service is great. Although I have talked to a few people who seemed to be just covering the phones and did not know as much..or anything..just talk to Michelle! She totally wants the customers to be happy.

Yes, Michelle is a dream.

We ordered two slabs of Piracema - a soft stone - and one arrived with huge chunks out of the edge. Luckily, my fabricator was able to salvage the install by creatively trimming and epoxy-ing; however, the chunks meant that the counters have a bit of a "belly cut" where the damaged area was located. I called Michelle, sent her pictures, and initially they were going to send me a new slab. But, since all I really need is the traditional "old school" 4" partial backsplash, they are going to fabricate those and send them to me.

Michelle was quick and responsive and I have to say my soapstone experience with them was tops! ::cough:: So punny!

I am one of those who had a horrible experience with M. Texiera. However, this GW forum is clearly M. Tex country and I've learned the hard way that this is just not the place to tell you that that company does not walk on water. As Circuspeanut has suggested, if you enable your email option, I'll be happy to explain to you, in detail, why I am not among the legion of delighted Texiera fans here.

I have no experience pro or con with them. We used Garden State Soapstone, also in NJ, and were very pleased with them.

I too am thinking about going with them and I would appreciate your feedback marthavila if you would care to share.

I ended up going with Garden State Soapstone also, Lindiver! A totally different, much more positive experience in my book.

Count me in the positive group of my dealings with M. Teixeira. I do agree that Michelle is a real asset to the business. We did go up to Hackensack and selected our soapstone in person back in the spring. It was labeled and held til our project was ready for it. Juan came and did the templating and Juan and Jose returned about a week later for the install. They did a fantastic job and I couldn't be happier! I was more than pleased w/ every aspect of the process.

As an active and responsible owner, it is to my best interest to know how my company is doing and how it is viewed by different clients, so we can continue to improve and/or address immediately any issues that may cause a negative image of our company.

I believe that if any person is not willing to write in public, and is suggesting to go on a private chat,to talk to someone who is looking to make a decision,they may have the intention to purposely hurt the company,or negatively influence that person, leaving us no way to tell our side of the story or defend ourselvs. I do not think this is fair play.

I have personally addressed to Marthavilla and Circuspeanut, on a negative experience they had with my company, it seems like they were not happy with my comments and even apologies on this thread, which are made simply to show everyone we really do care about what people think about our company.

My unbiased suggestion to the client, is to call Philadelphia Soapstone, Dorado Soapstone, Green Mountain Soapstone, Bucks County Soapstone, Garden State Soapstone, Connecticut Soapstone, visit as many of them as practical, and go with the one you fell the most comfotable with.

Happy Shopping!

I am sorry for a couple of typos on my previous reply:
"ourselvs, fell, comfotable"
Sometimes our hands are faster than our brains :-)

hi Roger,

I have no experience with your company whatsoever (I made my own metal countertops), which is why I posted as a neutral figure. I've simply noticed that these Teixeira threads tend to get heated, and I believe that the consumer for the most part will be more honest when they know they can speak their mind about a service without fear of an uncomfortable public debate with the owner of the service. That's all. I think that's pretty reasonable for a forum which is aimed at supporting the consumer in their evaluation of such services.

Many folks speak very positively of your company, from what I can tell. And readers here are savvy enough to filter online or offline user reviews, of all stripes, for themselves.

Roger, the last time we got into it on this board, you made a public claim that you would contact me in an attempt to settle our dispute for once and for all. As of this post, you have yet to honor your word. Moreover, you have never extended a direct apology to me on these boards. So, please quit with these blatant untruths about your desire to behave civilly! If you weren't so outright dishonest and arrogant in the first place, perhaps I wouldn't keep mentioning that I have a problem with you. Fact is, it was your dishonest,rude and dismissive dealing with me at the quote stage which are at the root of my upset with the way you do business.

GW family, I'll say it again: My personal experience with M. Tex -- again at the quote stage -- was one of the worst experiences of my entire kitchen remodel. Since then, I've learned from some others of you (mainly in offline conversations) that I'm not the only consumer to have been deeply offended or otherwise "harmed" by M. Texiera. At the same time, just about everyone who feels as I do refrains from publicly posting about their experience because they do not wish to incur the public wrath of King Roger Texiera.

For the record: I believe each and every one of you who has nothing but good things to say about your experience with M. Texiera. Good for you. But, for me, the emperor is without clothes. As such, this is one of those continual topics of consumer opinion on the GW boards from which I must reserve my right of free speech to vigorously dissent from the majority view.

Enough already.

Hello Martha,
as far as I know, please correct me if I am wrong, I have no disputes with you , in fact unfortunately we never got to do business together, as you decided to go with another company in the quote stages, I have no problems with that.
To call me arrogant, that is your opinion,and I am sorry you feel this way.

Dishonest, on the other hand is a very serious accusation, and I kindly ask you to write in public what me or any of my employess did to you even before we did any business, that was dishonest. I don't think I would go very far in business by being dishonest or arrogant.

Martha, it's been a long time since we had an issue with you, and I honestly don't even remember what it was, what I do remember is that I tried to remedy whatever it was that made you so angry, and obvioulsy it didn't help, I am sorry if I offended you in any way, it is not my intention. Please understand I cannot just watch someone repetitively try and negatively affect my company without defending myself. You are welcome to share your experiences here, that is what this thread is about, I am not upset about this, but it just seems that your goal is to hurt M.Teixeira instead of helping the forum members.

Lastly, I don't know how someone can have such a terrible experience without even passing the quote stage, and not even purchasing any product or service, I think what Martha refers to, is the fact that everytime she posts a negative comment, I reply to it, but that is my right.

Circuspeanut, I thought I had replied to a complaint from you in the past, I guess I was wrong, please accept my apologies.

This is a public thread, and I do respect every comment posted here, but I also feel I have the right to defend myself when less than truthful or exaggerated comments are posted.

I have never been disrespectful or spoken "in wrath", and I hold no hard feelings against anyone who speaks negative about me or my company, I fully understand that I cannot please everyone, as I said before, nor Jesus, Mohammed, Budha or Moses, nor Clinton, Bush or Obama, has pleased everyone, and I certaily won't either, what I can do, is to monitor sites like these and see what people are experiencing with my company so I can address any issues to ensure every client has a posite experience.

As I have absolutely nothing to hide, I welcome every single public comment about my company or me personnaly, as these comments are very helpful to me and my company alike. Those who prefer to speak in closed doors, perhaps have other things in mind.

I thank you all for reading

Roger M. Teixeira

Wow! talk about some strong feelings!

I've had generally good experiences with M Teixeira's. My soapstone (beautiful, wonderful, awesome, in love with it, etc) came exactly as I ordered and on time. In fact it was the only part of my kitchen renovation that was not horrendously delayed, which meant that when it arrived, I was not actually ready for it, and it sat in our garage for several weeks.

Along with my soapstone order, I ordered a can of epoxy. Because you can't just order epoxy on the internet w/o the rest of the DIY kit, I emailed Tex and asked them to add it to my order. I got an email confirmation for the addition. However, when the soapstone arrived there was no epoxy. My credit card was only charged for the soapstone, so obviously the order for the epoxy did not make it onto the final order somehow.

When I did contact M. Tex about the epoxy, they looked up my order, realized that they did in fact forget to send the epoxy, and overnighted it to me without charging me extra for the shipping. So I felt that they made every effort to correct their initial error.

Everyone makes mistakes sometimes, but at least M. Tex corrected the mistake and generously overnighted the epoxy for free. I'm happy with their service, love the soapstone that we received, and would recommend them w/o reservations. In my mind, because no one is perfect, the measure of customer service isn't just whether or not things go perfectly, but how a company responds to errors and tries to make customers happy.

I would contrast my experience w/ M Tex with my experience with my KD. I ordered and paid for soft-close hardware on all my cabinets, but inexplicably only half of them came with the correct hardware. Not only was the ha rdware not installed, but we didn't even receive loose hardware that we could install ourselves. I called and emailed our KD to fix the error, who blew me off and told me that because I didn't use their installation team, it wasn't their fault. Not sure how me getting a friend to help with the installation made a difference over what hardware they sent the cabinets with to begin with. Anyways, it wasn't until I threatened to chargeback my entire order on my credit card that the hardware magically appeared.

There is a fundamental attitude difference. I felt like my KD was more than happy to help me until I paid the balance of my order, after which she totally blew me off. With M Tex, they were quite service oriented through the end.

Just my personal $0.02

I never dealt with M. Tex as I live further south. However, although I ended up with leathered granite in the end, I desperately wanted soapstone and collected quotes, visited stone yards, etc. My best experience with soapstone shopping was with Philadelphia Soapstone. Despite the name, they are actually in southern NJ, Camden County.
They had a large selection, nice little showroom. It is family owned and operated. I wanted them to fabricate at first but my husband hired some other guy (turned out to be a total bum) . I explained to the guys at Philly Soapstone that my husband hired someone else and they had no hard feelings and tried to work with the slouch. The slouch didn't show up with my check for the material and to pick up my soapstone so the guys at Philly soapstone had to sell them after 2 weeks. The guys at Philly assumed I'd changed my mind when no one ever showed to pay and pick up.
So, my almost-customer experience with them could have been a piece of cake.

fyi: i'm talking to Vance Ebbecke from Marble Techniques in College Point, NY - they are the distributers in the NYC area for Green Mountain Soapstone and Vance told me he worked for them for 8 years prior to joining this company. He's been great so far - tho we haven't decided yet. Even provided references for us and I'm going to call tomorrow.

This was an interesting thread... Roger Teixeira... it seems strange to me that you don't allow the buying public to have their 'say'. I can see no reason why people would just make these negative experiences up. To show a genuine concern, why don't you contact these dissatisfied customers offline. you sound defensive and I would not buy from a supplier who behaves this way on a public forum. Mistakes and mishaps are bound to happen and part of being a successful businessperson is to learn how to work with all kinds of customers.

But they *are* having their say. It's not like he's deleting their posts. He's just responding to them, and I think his responses have been quite civil and respectful.

Oh no! I did not mean to start this commotion, I actually thought this would be easier for me. I'm sorry. I will continue to shop around, maybe somewhere local and with "savvier" sales people I guess.

Thanks guys!

Becky,
No, no - no apologies, your question was entirely legitimate and respectful. You couldn't have known that this fabricator has a somewhat uneasy history with this particular message board.

Happy hunting and hoping you find the perfect soapstone! :-)

Based solely on the posts on this board by the owner of M. Teixeira, I would probably look elsewhere to buy soapstone. He doth protest too much.

Hi beckyskitchen,
I'm pretty new to this but thought I would sign just to let you know abput my experience. As an M. Texeira shopper myself I was actually quite pleased with the way my visit was handled. No too long ago (2 or 3 weeks ago if I'm not mistaken) I took a very long drive to NJ and met with Sal, very nice and attentive person. I had orginally gone there with the intention of purching Soapstone, obviously, but Sal had some good points and somehow convinced me to go for granite instead. Not to mention I got some really good deals on it (who wouldn't appreciate that in this economy right?)Eitherway, i still took a close look at the soapstone and then went right over to a company he works with for granite, it wasnt too far actually, very convenient. To make a long story short, I chose my granite slabs, but I'm still not quite ready for them. He was very helpful and its nice to know that I could have gone with soapstone or granite almost "within the same company".
I'll post pictures when we're all done.

You might be totatlly on the up and up, rather than someone sent in specifically to say something nice about the company, or someone hiding behind an anonymous handle. If so, welcome! But please note that it is not good forum manners to cut and paste your response. If you must quote yourself, you should say something like "I just posted this in the other thread," and use quote marks or italics. Writing the same information over again, in new words, for a new thread is fine.

plllog,

Well I am new to the forum so I had no idea. However, if it was written by myself originally then I think it should be fine to copy & paste what I myself wrote, instead of spending an additional 3 mins rewriting everything. I don't believe this is considered plagerism, or is it? Eitherway here it goes:

"I'm pretty new to this but thought I would sign just to let you know abput my experience. As an M. Texeira shopper myself I was actually quite pleased with the way my visit was handled. No too long ago (2 or 3 weeks ago if I'm not mistaken) I took a very long drive to NJ and met with Sal, very nice and attentive person. I had orginally gone there with the intention of purching Soapstone, obviously, but Sal had some good points and somehow convinced me to go for granite instead. Not to mention I got some really good deals on it (who wouldn't appreciate that in this economy right?)Eitherway, i still took a close look at the soapstone and then went right over to a company he works with for granite, it wasnt too far actually, very convenient. To make a long story short, I chose my granite slabs, but I'm still not quite ready for them. He was very helpful and its nice to know that I could have gone with soapstone or granite almost "within the same company".
I'll post pictures when we're all done."

I hope that makes it more credible, I'm sorry.

Now moving on to bigger & better things...
Beckyskitchen, In my opinion, doing the right amount of research is essential. Using Texeira or not, this is a very long process so you deserve to deal with someone knowledgeable who can make things easier for you, or at least try :)

It isn't plagerism. It is internet etiquette.

As pllllog very politely explained:

"But please note that it is not good forum manners to cut and paste your response. If you must quote yourself, you should say something like "I just posted this in the other thread," and use quote marks or italics."

So there is no need to rewrite things. Just please let everyone know that you are doing what is called a "crosspost" (xpost for short).

Welcome to the forum!

:-)

francy

I bought my soapstone some time ago but i do remember when i made a special trip to visit M. Teixeira and they had NO stone or selection. They were also very unorganized, sloppy and unprofessional. Fortunately I found another soapstone supplier. It was a completely different feel  lots of stone! And I felt very comfortable at Dorado Soapstone. Hope this helps.

I had a good experience with M. Teixeira in SF. I recently bought soapstone from them and had it fabricated and installed by them. There was a mix-up however. The templater thought that he had told me that there would be a 1/4" lip on my sinks. One was a soapstone sink made by M. Teixeira so no problem there. The other was a Kohler Stages sink which has little ledges to hold the cutting boards that come with it. Every time I had seen pics of those sinks on this board the stone had been cut to allow the boards to fit. It didn't occur to me to let the templater know about this.

The soapstone was installed and I was so blown away by how gorgeous it was that I didn't notice the lip until after they left. Of course, the cutting boards wouldn't fit. I was heartbroken since I had built my island around this sink. I live about 75 minutes north of SF and I thought that it would cost me a ton of money to have them come back and I didn't even know if it could be fixed.

I called M. Teixeira and they told me that it could be fixed, they would do it at no charge and that they would be coming to my neighborhood in a couple of days for another installation so they could do it then. They came as promised but it turned out that their installation had been cancelled. So they had made a special trip and it took about 2 hours to fix. It wasn't easy work.

Now the templater didn't tell me about the lip but it was also my fault for not explaining the function of the sink and showing him the cutting boards. I was thrilled with how M. Teixeira took care of the problem. So you can count me in the happy with M. Teixeira group.

1.
Whenever any company sells a lot and has done so for many years,
the following truths can be said to be guaranteed:
- that most of the buyers have bought, paid and had their stuff delivered without significant complaint problem or hiccup
- that they were satisfied
- that some of the buyers (or prospective buyers) had problems

I think it is fine for R Teixeira to be active in defending his point of view.

2.
Whenever any individual approaches a kitchen renovation... and for the first time in one's life...
the following truths can be said to be guaranteed:
- that pain will be present as one goes through the learning process
- that some vendor somewhere might force you to go away instead of educating you
- that such an occurrence can be very painful

Last week we read remarks in another thread about one GW participant who used metaphors to describe her complaints. Only a handful commented that the language was either too vague, too inflated, or too psychological to be useful to others.

3.
Whenever any forum or group exists... and in stable form too...
the following truths can be said to be guaranteed:
- that an animal loyalty hierarchy will exist
- that this then causes some loyal person to spring to action to protect some other ranked member at some point
- that the discussion can then move Away from The Factual Point and revolve only around Loyalty and Conduct.

Last week we read remarks in two threads about how much we all appreciate that 1 GW participant who used metaphors to describe her complaints... And we also saw a lot of indirect criticism of the people who spoke to address facts and contain or minimize metaphoric language or psychological conclusions.

Be thee all aware. There's not much there, when all is said and done. It was pus busting pain.

hth