Florida Tile has an abundance of these. That said........all will have a minor warp at that length. This is one reason the recommended offsets, and grout lines are specific to sizes and manufacturers.

What Jan said. I would also recommend you look for rectified tile which will address the issues you've pointed out and also allow for thin grout lines.

For a 48" tile, this is actually not uncommon. ALL elongated tiles will have some warpage to them. The use of a leveling system will take that out. The 1/2" warpage is excessive. But that's not all the tiles, either.

The design company has worked with the tile supplier and they have agreed to take the tile back and are going to remove the 12 tiles that have been installed. We are now searching for new tile. Thanks for the comments/help.

And as a lovely gesture I would thank your Tile installer with a lovely holiday gift of some sort. His professionalism just saved you $10K or more.

The problem with a lot of newer tiles is they look great on sample boards but literally cant be actually installed properly. These huge format tiles look great but there are few mfg'd correctly and even fewer installers who can install properly.

Finally an installer who stopped and realized this isn't going well.

Thank you both for the two recent comments, holiday gift...done!!! Thanks, again!

Kudos to all the people involved. Everyone has stepped up on this one. We have not found a single manufacturer that has said they would take tile back if we found it to be warped when delivered.

We have seen expensive tiles that are warped, so price is not always an indicator. Hopefully your local tile stores or designer can steer you to some products they have experience with and can feel comfortable that you will not have the same experience. We don't use Florida Tile a whole lot, but we have never had excessive warping/lippage with the tiles we have used from them. We experience it most with tiles from a distributor called Mosaic Tile (which I think is located mainly in East Coast states). They are not the manufacturer, so we don't always know the brand name of the tile but we have learned to stay away from some of the products they sell.

Warping is caused by the manufacturing process. Nothing will make the warping go away, including the leveling systems. The tile will still be higher in the middle than at the 4 corners. These systems may assist an installer as he/she attempts to minimize the visual lippage. We have talked to multiple manufacturers of these products at industry shows and none will say that their product eliminates lippage.

You can bet no manufacturer will say it. That's a CYA thing. But I wouldn't say it if I hadn't seen it myself. And not only have I seen it, but I've been DOING it for the better part of 3 years now. On a weekly basis I use a leveling system so as to set 12x24's in a 50% brick joint with no lippage at all. I'm in the middle of one right now where I'm doing just that. As for the plank floors, the longer the tiles, the more the lippage systems are needed, and when I'm done, my floors are flat. If you don't believe me, there's a company in here called Main Eco Homes. I do all their tile work, and most of the plank floors have been on their projects. Send them a message and ask them. Believe me when I tell you--- if I couldn't get those floors flat, either they wouldn't use that tile, or they wouldn't use ME. As bowed as the elongated planks tiles are, there's no way I'd get them flat if I WASN'T pulling the bend out of them. Especially with the 48" tiles.