Wellington Windows arrives at our home

Here's the thing about Wellington Windows: On the phone when you make that initial appointment, they're really polite. The salespeople they send out are smart and friendly without being pushy. They answer your questions and get back to you promptly if you have issues you need resolved. The installers are all really good, clean, hard-working types. Throughout the entire process we never encountered anyone who was rude and who wasn't willing to help us out when we needed it. And we had lots of questions. We were spending over $15,000 afterall, so we wanted to make sure whatever we had questions about, it would get answered.

So here's in the end what we were getting -- 20+ vinyl replacement windows, with full frame replacements as well, as our old windows were rotten beyond belief. A new patio door. And screens all around.

And not to spoil the whole tale, but in the end, here's what we got after the first installation: Total window failure of all windows and the patio door. And half the screens didn't fit the frames. But more on that all later.

In the Beginning

Our neighborhood, in a suburb of Minneapolis, MN is a good neighborhood. Nice yards, good neighbors, but bad windows. All our houses were built quickly, and cheaply, and the biggest expense cut, was in the windows. If you live in my neighborhood and haven't replaced your windows yet, you will soon enough. We knew the windows were bad when we bought the house and tried to push off buying replacement windows as long as we could, but this past fall (2008) we knew the time had come.

We wanted to get the windows done in the fall, to avoid another winter of putting plastic over the windows and slowly watching them ice over. (If you live in Minnesota, you know what that's like.) When we started looking for companies, we searched the entire spectrum, from the $199 per window folks, all the way up to Anderson Windows.

We finally decided on Wellington Windows. It was hard trying to find online reviews for Wellington Windows, so we had to rely on word-of-mouth. A friend of ours had Wellington Windows' vinyl replacement windows installed in their home in several stages . They had a few problems with each installation. Each time, at least one of their windows would have a blown seal and need to be replaced. And each time it would take a month or more for that replacement to arrive. But a few windows over an entire house didn't seem like that big a warning sign. And it was only a few seal failures. Little did we know that we would see the same problems, plus a whole lot more.

Why, Why Wellingon Windows?

Over the past few months, something has become readily apparent to my wife and me:

If you live in the Twin Cities, or any where else in Minnesota, or for that matter, anywhere in Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, or any of the other states in America, you need to run for your lives from Wellington Windows. Don't believe their sales pitch. Don't trust their installers. And whatever you do, don't buy their windows.

I'm going to do the best I can, as it happened, and as it continues to happen, to describe our experience with getting replacement vinyl windows from Wellington Windows.