First and foremost, the point of this review is to caution all of you considering using this company to save your time and money and use a different window and door provider!!! There are so many out there with comparable prices and products (if not better) and I can assure you, the service and satisfaction you will get elsewhere will FAR exceed anything that Northern Comfort can provide.
This company had a fantastic reputation but was sold in the summer of 2017 and has since DRASTICALLY gone downhill, which is extremely unfortunate as I had heard nothing but good things from the old owners and the way they conducted their business, this information is why we decided to use the company for our windows and doors.. The GM of the company is named Jim, who does not return emails, phone calls and makes promises he cannot keep, he holds ZERO accountability.. The Installation manager, Mike, is no different. The entire company has a brush off attitude and makes promises they don’t keep, again NO ACCOUNTABILITY. Phone calls are ignored, customer satisfaction in workmanship is ignored, contracts are ignored and they provide false advertising on their website stating that they do not hire sub-contractors, the only people that came out to install our windows and doors on all 3 occasions were SUB-CONTRACTORS…
We ordered windows and a door in September of 2017 – we signed a "contract" with the sales rep named Greg, who completely ignored our calls and emails the minute after we signed the contract, and we were told that the ordering time would vary but that we would receive a call for installation somewhere between 8-11 weeks after ordering PER THE "CONTRACT" . We provided a 25% deposit as was requested to place the order and started the waiting period of having our items installed…
Cut to week 9,10,11 where we were told someone would be in contact with us to schedule an appointment for installation.. no one contacted us. We called our Sales Rep who was next to impossible to get a response from and ended up speaking with the Sales Manager. We were told that the windows and door were on back order and that they would be delayed a few weeks. Cut to week 16.. still have not heard from anyone from Northern Comfort, we called back to find out what was going on and when we could expect installation, we were told this time that the guy who was responsible for ordering inventory had been fired because he was not doing his job (meaning he hadn’t been ordering the right inventory and our windows still hadn’t been ordered??).. so we waited.. we were now into January and almost double the amount of time agreed upon in our contract to have our items installed.. it was a very cold winter and the reason we decided to purchase the items in September was to have them installed before the winter months to save ourselves on the hydro and gas to heat our home. Our plan did not work out the way we had hoped, things only continued to go downhill from here..
We continued to call the office every two weeks from January on to find out what the status was of our order and when we could expect to either have our deposit refunded or have our items installed. The office staff put us in contact with the General Manager, Jim, who was no more help than the last guy who we were dealing with who was "fired".. We expressed our concerns to Jim and told him how unhappy we were with the service and lack of communication and all we wanted was our windows and door installed as agreed in the original contract. He assured us that he would make things right and that he would discount the entire cost of the job to which would be “acceptable for both parties”. Between Feb-March, we had sub contract installers come to our home on 3 separate occasions on behalf of Northern Comfort to FINALLY install our windows and door.. the first time was just the windows, we had paid extra (as required by Northern Comfort) to have our shutters removed and re-installed which after the windows were installed, the contractor told us he “had an appointment” and could not reinstall the shutters as we had PAID extra to have done. On top of the this, the trim they used to frame the new windows on the inside of our home left a large gap of unfinished window completely noticeable. The subcontractors left our home in this state and thought the job was completed appropriately. We called the “Installation Manager” – Mike, who came out to our home to inspect the work done, agreed that it was poor workmanship and said that he would have another crew out to fix the issues. Mike agreed that the work was so poorly done that he told us the contractors had been fired.. (Why does this company fire all of their employees?? If they think it’s because it’s what the consumers want to hear, they are wrong! Maybe spend less time firing your employees and more time training them on how to property install windows and better customer service!) So after the Installation Manager visited our home and agreed to send out another crew, he basically went MIA and was unreachable by phone/email/text and even when we tried to reach him through contacting the office. So we waited..
A week later we spoke with the General Manager, yet again, who promised us complete satisfaction and reminded us that our final pricing would be reflective of our horrible experience with Northern Comfort, however, when we asked what the discount would be to see if we would even be happy with the amount they were going to take off before we decided if we were going to continue with having our items installed or pull the plug on the whole deal, we were consistently told that they “could not disclose the amount of the discount until after everything was installed” but they “promised” that it would be acceptable to both parties.. A week after the windows were “partially” installed and still not yet completed, we had a crew come out to install our door, my husband took another day of work to be home for the installation. The crew again were sub-contractors and showed up to our home WITHOUT the necessary items to install the front door.. they were there for 20 minutes, realized they didn’t have what they needed and left!! We called the installation manager and were again told, “those contractors were fired”.. however, that didn’t help the fact that we still had no door!
The third time my husband took a day off work to be home for the installation of the door it was done quickly and the crew was very respectable. We had no issues at this time, however we did pay extra to have a new door sill installed under our new front door, and what we had installed and what we were told was going to be installed upon ordering and paying the deposit, was very different. This was not the crew’s fault and when we spoke to the GM about it, he told us they didn’t offer the sill that we were told would be installed and that we had been “misinformed”… The crew who installed our door this time, fixed the trim and shutters on our windows and everything seemed to be in order.
Reviews are not something I have ever spent time on completing, however, I felt as though the situation that we experienced over the last 7 months with Northern Comfort was something that needed to be shared to warn other customers of the type of service that is provided from this company. We had many quotes for our windows and door before we decided on a company, and went with Northern Comfort based on the reviews that we read. What a terrible mistake on our part, it is unfortunate that we experienced what we did, however, if we can help any other families who work hard for their money and take pride in their home AVOID a situation like we experienced, I would consider it a successful post. Stay away from this company, use ANYONE else for your windows and doors.
