INCOMPETENCE! BULLYING! INSULTS!
... is what one can expect from doing business with The Bay King, and especially dealing with owner Mark Bente!
Let me first assure you that this is not a "hate posting" of some sort, rather a factual listing of events comprising an overall horrible experience with Mark and Lindy Bente of the The Bay King.
Here are the facts:
My wife and I were planning to upgrade/replace our widows, and interviewed a few companies for the job. Mark Bente of the Bay King came not only 30 min late to the in-home assessment, but also smelling of alcohol (that should have been my first clue). Nevertheless, overall he made somewhat a decent impression on me, and their pricing seemed fair. Thus I gave them the job, also thinking that all their 5 star ratings here on Yelp should mean something...
Mark took measurements of the top trapezoid custom windows and his wife Lindy ordered them after we made a 50% downpayment for Simonton.com windows, which - based on my research - seemed like a good brand. They told us it would take about 10 weeks to have them delivered and installed.
It's almost 16 weeks later now, and had we not pushed for some answers, we would have been in the dark (no pun intended) about getting our windows at all. (Professional and timely communication seems to be a mystery to Lindy Bente - you can also read about that in many other comments here on Yelp).
Eventually "installation day" has arrived! My wife and I were very excited and so it began. What happened next was nothing less than a NIGHTMARE!
INCOMPETENT: Turns out Mark Bente has mis-measured the top windows, and despite the warning of his very capable employee David (he's the best in the team), Mark - without my consent - broke out and destroyed our old windows, only to realize then he had messed up big time, hence couldn't install the new windows because of his wrong measurements. To cover up his rookie mistake (keep in mind he claims to be in business for over 30 years according to his SMS to me) he just put wood boards over our windows and main source of daylight in our living room. Then he left us hanging, having to live 3 WEEKS WITHOUT SUNLIGHT!!!
Lindy Bente then hustled to order new windows somewhere from a local glass wholesale, but never disclosed the source, manufacturer and quality of this new glass. (Remember, we've paid for Simonton Windows, and now we don't even know, if we're even getting anything close to this quality).
BULLYING: When Mark Bente came back to install those new windows - I was gone at the time - my wife reported back to me that she was so shocked how rude and bullying he was behaving towards her, not even wanting to answer simple questions. As a husband, I was really concerned about that as you can imagine.
During this second procedure - under Mark's supervision - our wall below aforementioned top windows also got messed up (see uploaded photo) hence, they had to come back to finish the job. Luckily this time it was without Mark Bente, and their employee David really made sure that everything, which went wrong under Mark's supervision, was now corrected. (Thank you, David!) After finishing up, David was told by his employer to get the final payment (check) from me, but I had to withhold it, since - after all these bad experiences with the Bente's - I really wanted to make sure that we will still get the life time warranty documentation for all windows.
INSULTS: This must have caused Mark Bente to lose his control of his inherent anger and frustration, and he replies to me - after a friendly consolidating SMS on my part - ranting about all the thins he's done and calling me an "arrogant asshole" - pls see uploaded screenshot of that.
Now, I've waited about a week before I made the time to write and post this. It is not an impulse driven posting, but I feel the severity of professional misconduct of Mark and Lindy Bente of The Bay King needs to be made public, so that at least you, a potential new customers has the opportunity to know more about this company, their owners, and what to expect.
Don't be blinded by the 5-star ratings, like I was. read more