As you may or may not know, I recently bought a house. This lovely 1923-built 2-storey house is filled with wonderful period-correct features, many of them “fixed” by it’s former owner - a landlord of some description (And judging by it’s prime location just four blocks from a halfway-house, I’m sure you can tell exactly what kind of landlord they were). So we have wonderful features like:
When we took posession of the house, we started working on a number of these issues. The K&T wiring was discovered a few months after we started working, and was a very unfortunate surprise (that should have been caught by our inspector). But the simplest (or so we thought) issue was going to be the windows. Fortunately there were a few places that do new replacement windows, and after shopping around a little, we chose a well-recommended company. Let’s call them “Window People”.
After a sales consultation and some measuring, talking with Joe in person, and correspond back and forth with “WindowPeople Sales - Alice” by e-mail. we place down a 60% deposit of ~$8,000 in August, with an expected one-day installation date in October. Possibly getting a little close to when the snow flies, but sure, we can do that. We get a nice tracking link so we can see how things are coming along.
Time passes, and we continue working on the house. October comes around and checking the tracking link our order is “Shipped to Warehouse”, with the next step being “Installation booked”, so we wait to hear from WindowPeople to book the installation.
November (and the snow) comes, and still nothing.
“Sure”, we think, “They don’t want to be up a ladder installing windows, and tearing a house apart, in sub-zero temperatures. Guess we’re waiting for Spring.” Meanwhile, we continue with life, getting AC installed, plumbing reworked and the house rewired, which starts to seriously sap our remaining funds.
The end of April comes around and my wife’s phone starts getting blown up by an unknown number while she’s at work, which isn’t leaving a message. Then in May we get a visit at the house from Joe, who says they’ve been trying to get in touch with us (well, that explains all the phone calls) and asks which direction we wanted our master bedroom window to open. I confirm “to the right”, slightly confused as by all rights the window should already be built and in their warehouse to fit, right?
Right?
On a second visit from Joe, we find out why: Apparently their warehouse was broken into and some of the made windows were stolen, including our master bedroom window. We also check through our e-mail and find out they tried to e-mail us once, in April, from a totally different address: “WP Office”. I give Joe my phone number, so they can contact us while my wife is at work.
We get a phone call on Tuesday. They want to come by and install all of the windows (that they have) over two days on Thursday and Friday. And they want payment of the full outstanding $12,000 (minus $500 for the missing window, which will due when they install it in mid-June). We inform them that they’re at least six months late, and we don’t have that full amount right now (time and expenses being what they are), and we’re informed if we can’t get it installed and paid by mid june, they’re going to charge us a storage fee and interest.
That is, IMHO, some kind of bullshit. Not only are they over six months late, they lost part of our order, and now they want to charge us a “storage fee”? Also, my math may not be the greatest, but if $8,000 is a “60% deposit”, shouldn’t the remaining be under $8,000?
Posted 2025-05-22 by Robert "Anaerin" Johnston