Fontaine Enterprises Inc

This company was referred to me by the MassSave company via my home evaluation thru my electric company. I wish I did this years ago. The men were friendly, explained their process & answered my questions. They cleaned up well after themselves & I was so impressed by their work that I called the boss to not interested rave about them, but also request they return to clean my gutters & install the shields. As soon as they finished, my basement which is too cold to hangout in, was 10-12 degrees warmer. I can now go down there without putting on layers just to go do laundry.

4 times scheduled to perform contracted work, 4 times failed to show up. Called Mr. Fontaine numerous times referring to NO SHOW'S. Of the numerous phone attempts to Mr. Fontaine, he provided us with various excuses. Mr. Fontaine was made aware, that time was of the essense. Finally we had to contract another installer, and had the work done. Would never recommend this contractor to anyone reading this review.

Quick Review: In the end, extremely unprofessional behavior from the "new" owner, Shawn Gilette. A total of 3 visits were required because of incorrect specs when quoting the job and overall poor workmanship. When attempting to try and make things right with them/us, the owner completely dismissed me as a customer and actually hung the phone up on me when I asked him a pointed question about replacing something we paid for with a far inferior product. He accused me of trying to "push my luck" to see "how much money I can get back from them". He told me to "keep my money", referring to the balance. I am happy to furnish photos of issues/concerns we've had with their work to prove that my comments are no unfounded at all. The Details: In November 2015, we contracted Fontaine to handle some blown insulation in our attic. We were very pleased with the service we received and seemed to really connect with the crew. We decided this Spring that we would contract them to also handle the replacement of four windows in our front room as well as install a steel core door and a new storm door. This was something they advertised doing. Unfortunately things didn't go as we had planned with this job. Initially, the staff was great, the office was very responsive to inquiries and concerns, etc. However, the overall workmanship is where we had some issues and the behavior of the staff diminished greatly as of the posting of this review. Day one of the installation: The crew arrived and removed our old windows and installed the new windows. Next, they removed our old hollow core door from the house. They then left the property to pick up a custom ordered door from Lowe's. Upon returning, they began installing the new door. Immediately upon unboxing it was evident that the in-swing was the wrong direction. This was an issue when it was ordered, not being specified properly by Fontaine when they spec'd the job. Due to it being a custom size door (they told us), they said it'd have to be re-ordered. When we raised the issue the installer had no other option but to install the door, as they had already ripped out our original door. Later, I came in to see the progress and noticed that there were all kinds of scratches (down to the metal) on the front and back of the door. There was severe denting in the square panels on the bottom interior side of the door, etc. The installer informed me that the door looked like this when they took it out of the packaging. Either way, a door with the wrong in-swing and damage needed to be installed, so they installed it. For this part of the job, they held off on installing the storm/screen door. They assured us that they would work with Lowe's to get the door replaced due to the damage as well as get it with the correct in-swing. Given the circumstances when they left for the day, things inside looked pretty decent. When I went outside, I noticed that the caulking job around the windows was extremely sloppy, there were some exposed screw heads sticking out of where the old windows used to sit, there were gaps between the house and the new window, all of the old caulking was just sticking out like a sore thumb due to the whiteness of the new windows, etc. Even more concerning was the picture window was sitting in the sill very unlevel / uneven. I immediately contacted Fontaine about this, with pictures pointing out the areas of concern. I was told they were planning to come back and clean up the exterior as well as install the replacement interior door and the storm door. The apologized for the issue(s). Return visit one: A few weeks later, Fontaine came back on-site with a different crew. Upon looking at the unlevel picture window the installer said he could see what was wrong. He decided that it was better to completely remove and re-install the window. He removed the window and actually meticulously cleaned the exterior of the windows the best he good with citrus cleaner, etc. He also applied a couple coats of primer (we provided the primer, brushes, scraper and ladder) to the older exposed wood from where the old windows sat. The picture window was reseated properly. Again, the second part of this return visit was to remove and re-install the correct steel core door that was damaged the first time as well as the wrong in-swing. Well, this time it was the correct in-swing, however there was damage in the same area of the interior of the replacement! There was also several cosmetic issues with dings and scratches as well. The quality of the door, I totally hold Lowe's and their manufacturer responsible. However, it would seem that if you are a contractor (Fontaine Enterprises) and you're receiving product from Lowe's and you're paying for it up-front that you'd inspect it, especially knowing the first door was so damaged, etc. Again, they had removed the old door first before inspecting this door. They took pictures again and said they'd work with Lowe's to try and get another replacement. We were told that a manager from the local Lowe's would likely be reaching out to us. We then got a call later saying that upon a follow-up call to Lowe's management said "We don't do that". For the time being though, they completed the install and installed the screen / storm door as well. I was not home when the job was completed, however upon returning home I was very bothered by a poor installation job on the screen / storm door. The door ordered and installed was TOO SHORT for the opening of our door way. This resulted in large open gaps to the outside in the bottom left and right side of the door (about 2 inches on each side). They compensated for the height difference by using the attachable sweep part for the bottom of the door but couldn't use the factory drilled holes because they wouldn't line up, so they drilled their own holes. At the top left corner of the door, a piece of channeling that goes horizontal across the top of the door was snipped too short and there was exposure to the outside there as well. I immediately contacted Fontaine and they said they'd order a replacement door and come back a 3rd time to re-install it. During this conversation we requested a discount on the damaged door. We came to a mutually accepatable discount amount and agreed to keep the interior door despite the small damage spots, as it was far more tolerable then the original damaged door. The crew came back on 5/13/16 to install the correct size screen / storm door. They seemed to have a difficult time installing the door. Not sure why, but screws weren't lining up, they dropped a screw and couldn't find it for a bit, etc. We also noticed that the replacement screen / storm door was NOT even the same door that they came to replace. The door we originally had was a Wood core storm door. It felt very heavy duty and closed nice and quiet/smooth. The replacement they brought was a flimsy aluminum door. It was like half the quality and due to it being aluminum and flimsy, when the door shuts it makes a rattling metal slam sound when it closes, even if the closing piston is adjusted to be softer. Their remedy to this was to issue an additional discount to us for the headache. At this point my wife was just ready to move on, so we accepted the discount, etc. After my wife and I discussed this further, we came to the conclusion that we wanted this addressed properly. We waned to give Fontaine Enterprises the opportunity to at least remedy the issue of installing a completely different door from what they replaced. As a result, we reached out to them via e-mail and in the interim we issued a stop payment on the final check. We sent them a note just asking them to please make this right for us. Shawn Gilette (Owner) from Fontaine Enterprises called me back and said he wanted to make this right with us. From the second the call started he was completely dismissive of me and really wouldn't even let me talk. He explained that they've now come back twice to try and make things right. As you can see by the details above, coming back and installing inferior products or not installing them properly is NOT making anything right for the customer. He accused us of trying to "press our luck and see how much money we can get from them". I asked him "so replacing a quality woodcore door with an aluminum door is making things right for the customer?" He dismissed me and said "Like I said, have a nice day" and he hung the phone up on me. When I shared with him that I was going to be writing a detailed review, he said "you can write to anyone you want, in the end you'll just keep pushing your luck to see how far you can get us to go".

unknown

I have no complaints at all. I would use this company again, very professional and did a fantastic job.

He was done in a day. He was totally awesome. He was half the price of some of the other people I got a quote from. He was right on the job and his price was excellent.