Overall, our project experience with Vivax was subpar and unsettling at times. We contracted with Vivax to replace 6 windows and a patio door as well as to repair some exterior woodwork and repaint the exterior of the house. We would definitely warn AGAINST using Vivax for any glass replacement job. A quick summary of the headaches for the project is below:
Problems:
- Huge lack of communication. Workers would show up much later than scheduled or not at all, with no communication or updates to us. We all have cell phones now, even a quick text message would have sufficed. We would be told to expect someone at 2pm, only to get a phone call at 5pm that they're 1.5 - 2 hrs away but were still "on their way." We had scheduled a viewing at the downtown office to discuss a possible deck job on a Sunday morning, but no one was there when we drove out there and no one answered the phone when we tried to call. There would be hours or days of just having no clue what was going on with the window job, when someone would be coming to work or finish up, and it began to feel like we were always a last-minute rush job.
- Team showing up without knowing what they're going to do. The team to replace the glass didn't know which windows/door was going to be replaced. The team showing up to paint the house didn't realize that the shed was included in the job. We ended up feeling like we were under house arrest for large portions of the project because we didn't want something to get messed up.
- Sloppy cleanup. The day after the glass replacement, we found straight blades in the grass when we went outside to play with our young kids. A shutter was placed in front of the dog door, which one of my dogs ran straight into at full speed. A pair of shutters were left hanging by a single screw each, which resulted in the shutters banging against the house for a few very windy days. One of the shutters was even ripped off and shattered on the deck just a few feet away from where one of my dogs was standing. I don't know what would have happened if it had landed on my dog.
- Not a consistent feeling of professionalism. The first team that we had contact with showed up not realizing he was in charge of replacing some high windows and, after complaining to my husband about how people don't tell him what windows are being worked on, left to go get the required tools for the job. The van from the paint job left a large oil leak on the street in front of our house. The project manager asked us if we knew how the financing works, repeatedly remarking that he was new to the windows, to the financing, basically making us feel like for being the project manager, he wasn't very familiar with the project at all.
With the shutter, the workers had left them hanging askew since they had worked so late one night, promising to show up in a day or 2 to finish the outside portion of the glass job. Those days passed with absolutely no contact from anyone at Vivax, and we had to start calling to see when someone was going to come back and finish the job and also take down the shutter that was still banging into the house from the wind.
The windows/door are not quite the quality that I expected. My sister came over and said "I love how easily new windows slide!" and tried to slide my new window open, only to realize that my new windows do not have that "new window easy slide." My new patio door leaks water into the inside tracks. They're all Milgard, so maybe we should have just gone with the Champion quote we got -- but we were sold on Vivax's professionalism, warranty, and customer satisfaction guarantee. We went with them over several other quotes, some higher and some lower. At this point, I would have gone with someone else for the window/door replacement. The doors/windows we now have little defects that you wouldn't expect from new windows/door -- dings in the handles, missing tufts from the weather-stripping, etc. When Vivax finished installing the windows/doors we were told that they'd come back the next day and clean off the windows like gunk from stickers. That never happened.
The woodwork job is the only job that went the way I expected. The project manger was in close contact with my husband and -- more importantly -- when the manager said something was going to happen at some time, then that's what happened.
The quality of the exterior paint job is also what I expected. They spent a day prepping the house and managed to caulk over a crack in our stucco very beautifully. The paint lines are clean and sharp, the color evenly applied. A 2-man team managed to paint the entire house over the course of 2 days. It does look great, but by now I'm just so worn out from the entire project's process, from having little things not getting fixed in a timely manner, that even a great job on the painting would still leave a bad taste in my mouth. But even with the painting, a pair of kitchen shutters got forgotten and left sitting in our backya read more