Solid Hardwood, Engineered and Laminate Flooring - Trying to install and extremely frustrated.. plz help!!

I have purchase Scenic laminate flooring made by Tarkett and trying to install it today. The planks are tongue and groove and are measure 50-7/8 inches by 7-1/2 inches and is suppose to be a glueless system. I am installing it in a basement over a concrete floor. I have put down the foam/vapor barrier material provided to me. The trouble I'm having is that the seams are not completely flat and When I try removing the plank and re-insert it, it either buckles the plank upward on the long outer side, or it leaves a gap in the seam or raises seam about a thumbnail thickness. I have tried many different ways and angles for each plank and nothing works very well. They say to join short end first of previous plank then the long end but have found that long end first works better but not perfectly. These instructions say the its quick and easy and have heard all over that they are all quick and easy but it has taken me 8 hours to do just 4 rows with 2 and a half planks per row. Can anybody tel me anything at all to get me through this before I toss all 26 boxes out the front door!!!

Thanks!

You might you have some banana boards. I think you need a helper on this, or, use cartons of flooring to weight down the assembled rows until you can get off the wall aways. It would help to use blue painters tape to keep the assembled rows together so they don't come apart when you try to insert a new board. Tape both the sides joints and butt joints.

It is a rotating lock. No tapping involved.

You need a wedge and a 2x4 about a foot long.

Slide the wedge under the already installed plank, near the end your continuing the row. Rotate the end joint down close as possible to the length joint. Get the length joint inserted/started into the T&G, while that wedge is holding the previous plank up at that special angle. Now take your foot long 2x4 and tap on the outter length edge to get it going into the T&G. As you tap up and down the length, slowly slide the wedge out. As it starts to lay flat, keep tapping on the length into the T&G. It should lay flat. Then repeat as you move down the row.


If you have enough helping hands, you and get all the eng joints in a row put together, and then slide, so the t&g are lined up. Lift the whole row up at that special angle, and rotate the whole row in, using a little tapping from the 2x4.

Thanks I will definitely try that idea.
I got a few responses regarding the material being a room temp which it is cause its been stacked up in the basement in its packaging waiting to get installed. I was also using a tapping black already but doing it after the planks were already lying flat on the floor after inserting into the t&G's. I went to the store where i bought it and they made it look so easy by just inserting and dropping it into place without a tapping block.
Anyways i will let you know how it goes.

---- follow up! ----
Using a tapping block did not work for the most part cause it kept breaking the grooves on the wood even though i was not hitting it very hard at all. I managed to get some help though and angled and pressed them in pretty good at this point.
Thanks to everybody that read and/or replied to post.