Solid Hardwood, Engineered and Laminate Flooring - laminate headache

We installed laminate and now have a a few problems, the worst one is that although all the planks fit perfectly together on the long side, short ends are tight on one side and open the width of your fingernail on the other - has anyone experienced this? It is happening on at least half of the joints, a carpenter looked at it and said to him it looked like a factory defect - not a square cut from the factory. The factory representative saw a picture of the flooring and went through the usual script, we got it wet, the humidity was too high, we were supposed to use a tapping block, oooh, well then we werent supposed to use a tapping block, and on and on it goes. I tried to attach a picture but I am new at discussion forms, so couldnt figure out how to do it. We left more than enough gap around the edges of the flooring flooring, the underfloor is level, we used the proper underlay, our temperature, humidity, are all fine, I would appreciate any feed back on this.

I'm not a flooring guru, but you can take those pics you took and upload them to a photobucket.com type site and then post the link to the pics in here.

thanks for the info on sharing the photos, they can be viewed at
http://s208.photobucket.com/albums/bb130/blevy_photo/
BLevy

Tough to tell just from the pictures. For those seeking to do a laminate install, these are the kinds of things you look for as you put the floor in and correct before moving on to the next course.

One picture looks like it wasn't seated all the way in if you tapped from the long side, the verticle planks don't line up with one another and they should. The others I can't tell.

If you were a little overly aggressive with your tapping block, you may have crushed some fibers if your hammer hit was not square to the edge. Although in my experience, the edge usually blows out if that happens. If you look at the floor from an angle where light can reflect, do you see a slightly raised area around the areas of concern?

the long sides of the planks fit together beautifully, its the short ends only and it only became evident after we started to walk over the floor a couple weeks, no the areas arent raised at all, I know what you mean tho I have seen damage done to other flooring projects that were hit too hard with the tapping block when being put together. In our quest for answers locally we saw a multitude of damage resulting from various things, water, humidity, not enough room to move, but nothing like our problem. Thanks for the input.

No guarantee this is the issue, but I've seen a similar effect in other floors. The side joint locks together much more tightly than the end joint and is more reluctant to gap open. If there is stress on the joints, you'll get this effect. Notice that all the gaps are on the same side of the planks? This indicates to me that there could be stress on the joints and the floor is adjusting to relieve said stress. For instance, if the first few rows are put together without a stair step, and too long a run is attempted with out a stair step, the entire floor can have a slight twist or skew to it. One way to envision this is to take a few good, straight boards and lay them side by side, butted up to each other. Make sure the ends are all at the same length across both ends. Then skew the whole thing to one side or the other. If you skew them to your left, at the ends of them the boards will have a slight stair step look to them and all the butt or end joints will have this same stair step look, with the joint being tight on one side and gapped on the other. They will all be gapped on the same side, yet the side joints will still be tight. My guess is, somewhere during the install the floor got a bit skewed and it's just now showing up as it adjusts out. This stuff is manufactured to some very exacting standards and I've never done one that the ends weren't exactly square of the sides.