LONG Review - Please read before considering Window World! Look at my pictures! If one branch of…read moreWindow World is willing to cut these corners, what's to say all of them won't do the exact same to your house?
I hired Window World of Binghamton in early 2022, to replace 18 windows around my home. No small task, and definitely not a small bill, being north of 15 thousand said and done. They came out to install in mid-late 2022, about 5-6 months ago. Crew were polite and friendly, and cleaned up most of the mess they made. They had left some of the old wooden frame pieces, nails included, scattered about my yard and driveway, but things happen, not the end of the world. They seemed to work very efficiently, and not once came to me with any issues. We noticed some leftover glue residue on some of the windows, imperfections in the caulking, silly little things like that. None of which I would ever consider big deals, or warrant a negative review. At that point, I would've gave Window World a 9.5/10 review, and kind of glad I had forgotten to do so.
Last week I had some roofers out to replace the roof on my house. In the process of doing so, they had to undo the window flashing to install the new roof, since two of the windows sit practically on the roof line of the back dormer. Upon doing so, they discovered a completely rotted window frame, and came to get me to go up on the roof. At that point I had them un-do the second window, and watched another rotted frame exposed right in front of me. This is when the photos were taken, you can see the contractors hands holding the flashing still.
As you can see in the photos, the wood is completely rotted through, and clearly has been that way for awhile. You can see the previous owners had at one point covered the rotting wood in some roofing material themselves, so there's no argument that the wood wasn't this way when they installed the window. I do believe this is the very last window they installed that day, so I can imagine it was a hurry up, let's get home, they'll never know type thing.
I spoke with WW of Binghamton the next business day, initially asking them their process on discovering rotted wood during replacement window install. They confirmed their process was such that the rot would be cut out and replaced with fresh wood, or if the damage was bad enough, they would re-frame the window. After confirming this is when I raised my concern and anger about the situation, considering I just discovered quite possibly the most rotted wood I'll see on a house. They agreed to send a service guy out ASAP.
Service guy came today. Extremely nice fellow, absolutely no qualms with him or what he did, but we basically just chatted about the situation. No real inspection of any windows. I am now left back in the same position I was upon discovering the rot. No real answers.
While I do agree the window that is pictured does sit on an area of the house that is prone to this type of issue, meaning lack of sunlight and dampness, how can I rest assured that the 17 other windows they replaced don't look the exact same way? They may not be prone to the same type of damage, but the house is old, and if they were willing to cover up that bad of rot on one window, what do the rest look like.
Overall, now I'd give Window World a 1/10. I feel I've been robbed of over $15,000, and have a house full of windows that I just picture are waiting to completely rot away and fall out in 6 months.
The 1 only being because the windows and materials they used are definitely very nice. Zero issues with the product itself. The company, however, I would avoid like the plague. Go with Andersen or Pella, hopefully they have honest installation crews and you'll avoid this massive headache I've found myself in.