VALUE WINDOWS & DOORS

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Few weeks within I replaced my windows through Value Windows, the glass in sash broke. Called them, scheduled an appointment and it was replaced without any hassle. The have lived up to their "Lifetime Warranty" promise so far.

Installed 11 GS vinyl windows, one GS patio door and one single hung Galaxy window. With a lot of hesitation I went with this company solely for the price. Their price is a fraction of the competition and it does reflect on the quality and looks, which I was aware of it. Their thickness of frame is greater than name brands but offer a lot of features like triple pane, NEAT glass, LoE3, night locks, automatic sash lock, heavy duty patio door locks, aluminum tracks for sash/patio door (only with GS). They also offer lifetime warranty on glass, but have to see how well they will honor it in the time of need. Will update this review after a few months of use.

Around the beginning of December we got a quote for about $800 for new custom-fit interior plantation shutters for five windows, with a $200 installation fee and were promised the installers would come in the morning of December 17th (and we wrote this in the signed contract). We went with them because they were the most competitively priced and could do the installation the soonest. Problem 1: the installers never showed up that day. Cheryl (the sales agent) said they would come in the evening, so we stuck around all day, but they never showed up or called to say they would be unable to make it. Called Cheryl the next morning and we rescheduled for the 20th and the installers actually showed up that time but were obviously in a rush (finished the job in 30 minutes).
We were very unhappy with the quality of the installation. We have rounded molding on the window frame which should have been removed to provide a flat surface on which to install the shutters, but they just screwed them on directly to the molding and applied caulking to try to fill the 1/2 inch gap left between the shutters and window frame. You can see the screws from the inside, and the caulking obviously didn't fill the gap properly. I emailed Cheryl some photos and called her and she said she would speak to the installers about it. It took a couple of phone calls over a few days before the installers finally came back on December 29th. What bothered me the most was their attitude. No apologies for the shoddy work, just shrugging their shoulders and 'what do you expect for a $200 installation'. Refused to fix the problem and just applied more caulking to try to seal the gaps. They were obviously annoyed at being called back. Very unprofessional.
This company may be one of the cheapest but as the old adage goes, if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. I will never use this company again and recommend they be avoided at all costs.

Update 1/12/13: I received a call from the manager who was very apologetic for my experience and said he had spoke to the employees involved. I appreciate them following up.

OK, first off - if you don't speak Chinese, expect to pay 10-20% more than if you did, and also to have a very difficult time communicating with anyone from the company other than your sales rep. Value Windows is an all Chinese operation out of Monrovia (the Baldwin Park address is wrong). They do their own fabrication of windows at their factory in Monrovia and have their own installers, so they can charge a lot less than people who have to get another company to make the windows for them. They have a tiny showroom of their various products, which include all varieties of windows, sliding doors, box/garden windows and french doors. You can ask for any style of window you want, with a huge variety of decorative grids to be put inside if you want, since they make the windows themselves. Their rates are quite cheap to begin with, but those just give them room to play around with the price. They don't take the old frame of your windows out, they just retrofit them with slightly smaller frames that are nailed into place, then insulated with spray foam, then the edge is concealed with vinyl siding. You can't even tell it's a retrofit. The frames are warrantied, but the glass itself is not. My job included 10 windows, ranging from a small bathroom window above a shower, to a giant 90 inch wide one with one 45" sliding pane. It also included 3 sliding glass doors, which were also around 90" wide each. When we requested a quote, the measurer came out the next day. His first words to me were, "Do you speak Chinese?" When I indicated no, he looked slightly crestfallen. I had to point to the windows I wanted retrofitted, but it wasn't difficult for us to communicate what I wanted. After he had measured all of the windows and doors, he again asked, "no Chinese?" Again I said no. He tried showing me multiple documents explaining the benefits of triple-E glass that were all written in Chinese, but I just shook my head because I couldn't read them. The next day, a sales rep emailed me two itemized quotes, one for the materials and one for the installation. The windows themselves were offered at around $5500, then $1600 for the installation. My father-in-law, who speaks fluent Chinese and who had used this company previously showed me his quote. I noticed that they had given him a 25% discount from the list price, then offered to pay his sales tax as well. I only got a 10% discount on my quote. From that point on, my father-in-law did all the rest of the negotiation with Value Windows in Chinese. He had them send another measurer out because we changed some of the parameters of the windows, then haggled the company down to $4000 for the windows and $1500 for the installation, then forced them to do the installation on a Sunday, which they normally don't do. Anyway, a team of four installers showed up on time on Sunday, spent about 5 hours installing the windows and caulking all the seams, then hauled away all the old windows very neatly. No broken glass left around, plus they even cut part of the siding on the house away to make the window look like more of a natural fit (instead of cutting the window frame). The whole job took 6 days from when we gave them the down payment to when the installers had left and the windows look great. We had another window guy that we found in an ad through the mail and advertised $70 installation for a window put in a retrofit bid too. He had to order his windows from some company in Utah and bid somewhere around $9000 because his materials fees were so high. Value Windows' prices are pretty good to begin with since they make their own stuff, but to really get a great deal, I think you need to be able to speak Chinese.