I feel your pain - had similar issues with my kitchen family room install a few years ago. Go post your info on the john bridge tile forum where lots of pros hang out. If they agree that it is not acceptable, that will give you more leverage with your installer than any comments you get here. Hope you can get this resolved to your satisfaction.

numbersjunkie ,Thank you very much for your suggestion.

sure hope you don't have heat wires under that floor - we did and couldn't risk having some tiles torn out and damaging the wire. I later found out there are tile leveling systems many installers use on the rectified large format tiles to prevent/minimize the lippage.

Isn't the selling point of rectified tile to have minimal grout lines? I don't see what good they are if they are so prone to lippage.

Also, I have raised floors (the kind that aren't slab). I have Ditra under my floor tile. Do tiles on slab floors just go straight on top of the slab? How do they deal with the irregularities in the floor?

There are no heat wires under the tiles. No any leveling material was used to flat the concrete subfloor. The tile guy just did the work as a regular tile job. The grout line is 3/32 without spacer. the Installer eye balled. Additive was applied on slab to set tiles.

monkeyta, have you been over to the John Bridge site with your photos and questions? They are amazing over there, very helpful and quick to respond.

I have just registered an account on John Bridge site. But I am not allowed to post now. Waiting for admin to review and grant permission to post there.

Don't know why you weren't instantly approved there. I wasn't aware that was procedure...

Lippage can be a real issue with the longer "wood plank tile." The floor must be very flat and the installer must know what he's doing. I always use a "medium bed morter" as this prevents the tiles from sinking down a bit as they set. One needs to hold them up to a level plane during curing.

That is unacceptable to me.

-Babka

To StoneTech : Flat floor and "medium bed morter" or "large format morter" are two keys. I hope other people be aware about this and learn from my experience.

We redid flooring in house built in 80s -- concrete foundation was the surface that carpet and linoleum was laid on originally--no tile even in bathrooms. We did tile in kitchen and new carpet once and then a bigger remodel in 2008--and changed all flooring to either same larger format sq 18" or 20" tiles or laid new carpet...
there were some areas that were problems because the foundation was not level--
the original builder didn't care about it because he was not installing anything that needed a very smooth finish---carpet and vinyl linoleum are very forgiving. Porcelein tiles aren't--and the larger the tile, the less the forgiving.
MY contractor was a good tile guy for some things but he did not check for areas with significant slope/irregularity--and I didn't know enough then to ask for it.
He should have poured leveling compound or used the liner in several areas--one in bathroom hall and one in area of kitchen especially.
He wound up having to grind down one spot in the hall because he just couldn't add enough mortar base to level the floor--
even after he did there were some "joins" where there were corners sticking up--you couldn't grind those down w/o causing cracks or flaws in the tile...

so many people are going to the larger format tiles and most don't know that the floor below has to be very level to make a quality install...same with walls in bathrooms for larger format tiles...
maybe that might be factor in the width of the planks being installed but I would bet that is more the installer not being accustomed to tight joins and just doing it "his" way...
He should have givien you a sample board with the same grout he will use on the install before he laid any of them...