I have to start off by saying, I love my wood stove & I don't normally write reviews but in the 18 months I have had three incidents with terrible customer service when dealing with Tim the owner of White Mountain Stove Shop. The most recent is due to serious damage done to my roof because of an improper installation of snow splitters. I worked in customer service for almost 20 years managing multiple teams and let me tell you... It is super easy when everything goes as planned and customers are happy. It is when things go wrong ,and the way you handle the situation is what makes a business reputable and makes clients happy. As you can see this store DOES get good reviews... But it is the negative reviews that are responded to with simple language that pushes the blame back to the customer & washes their hands of the situation that is very telling. Even with minor issues, each time Tim did not want to hear me out- only push all the blame back on me, or tell me that simply don't know what I am talking about or say it is due to my house.
On September 1st 2021 we had a new Hearth Stone Manchester wood stove installed along with a new stove pipe, chimney and two new snow splitters or diverters at a total cost of $7,020.00. This setup was going to replace the old wood stove, chimney and single snow diverter that came with the home the we purchased it.
Issue 1. The night after the install we had a rain storm and it sounded like water was pouring into the roof, REALLY LOUD. When I called Tim said that it was my house and that is just how it sounds with metal roofs. When I explained that the old stove was completely silent he said it was installed wrong and the new one was really solid and would be louder. After emailing the salesman that helped us we when we purchased the setup he did send someone out to look that the situation. He added a piece of flashing and a little more insulation and it is a little quieter, but still louder than the old stove. I currently have bricks on the pan that they installed to dampen the sound.
Issue 2. Towards the end of October started having small amounts of water drip down from the hole in the ceiling where the stove pipe goes through when it rained. My wife called and unfortunately got Tim on the phone again. Tim kindly mansplained to her that it was again .... Because we have a metal roof and that it is condensation in our crawl space when we burn the wood- NOT A LEAK. My wife tried to push back and say it only happens when it rains... Tim mansplained harder that these things happen with our kind of unconventional home. It was only after I climbed into our crawlspace while it was raining and took video of it coming through the roof and dripping down through the hole and sent them in, was a technician sent out. He found that the holes from the old snow splitter were not sealed properly. He sealed them and the problem was fixed.
Issue 3. The last time I reached out was March 10th because there was serious damage done to my roof because the two snow splitters that they installed ripped off and tore holes in my sheet metal roof. The splitters were only attached with THREE screws each even though there are EIGHT tabs on each of the the splitters. Furthermore the THREE screws were attached to the ridges of the sheet metal and not directly to the sheetmetal where it lays flush to the sheathing. This causes there to be a 1 inch gap between the sheathing and where the splitter and the sheet metal were attached. Under the weight of the snow the screws bent at the sheathing level tearing holes in the ridges and then snapped off the screw heads. The single snow splitter that they removed lasted the entire life of the home and had EIGHT Screws in it that were attached directly to the sheet metal and sheathing.
Tim's response:
-Your roof isn't built right and has not sheathing. He literally claimed that I have a sheetmetal roof with nothing under to hold the splitters down.
**In Reality- It absolutely has sheathing/substrate or it wouldn't support ANY snow or his crew when they installed it **.
-That I was not managing my snow properly and I should have been removing the snow in front of the splitters. Which makes them kinda useless... "Splitters can't handle "6 ft of snow!"
**In Reality We had nowhere near 6 ft of snow on the roof**
-That the splitters were installed to manufactures specifications.
***In Reality I reached out to Duravent, the specs say to use all eight tabs read more