Fred Hagemeister

After mounting frustration, I (Fred) tried contacting Stacey Skelton, asking for a meeting with her and whoever she had just mentioned in the last phone call that “oversees all installation projects” so we could discuss the situation (blowing past the project deadline by over 100% – will probably be more like 3-400% when it’s all said and done) and quality of work.  Being quite terse, she just gave me a name and number (the name later turned out to be misspelled).

I called the number and got a hold of someone named December Winton (or Winston?).  She didn’t know the name I mentioned from Stacey but took down my story (summary of this blog thread) and said she would alert Xavier who would follow up on this matter.  As soon as she mentioned Xavier, I realized that was the person Stacey was trying to send me but could not be recognized by December based on the misspelling/mispronunciation.

December went on to say that Xavier is the person who is the project coordinator, and the person with whom I should be interacting with any project issues.  I was shocked (and told December) because there was no point that anyone from Lowe’s (Stacey, Rochelle, or the two store managers) ever mentioned there was a project coordinator besides Stacey.  She didn’t believe me when I said I never met or talked to this person, never heard the name or number, or anything about a separate coordinator, or that my contract with Lowe’s never mentioned this person or her office.  I expanded on that saying that the contract only lists Stacey as the salesperson with her number and specifies multiple times on the backside that all disputes should first try to be handled between the customer and salesperson informally before arbitration.  It never said “project coordinator.”

So during this whole time of horrible service to the customer, whether bad product ordering, order fulfillment, installation labor issues, or installation quality issues (for which I had all four!), I should have been working with this unknown and unnamed person to fix the issues?!  Unbelievable!  This alone gives me significant dissatisfaction with Lowe’s Home Improvement Stores.

So here is another way of breaking down the issues.  Here are the problems with Lowe’s:

• the salesperson/project coordinator took the order for white windows with almond interiors (this would color match exterior and interior and deal with the issue that we have interior wood trim but wood windows would be high-maintenance and more expensive).  She then called a few days later, i.e., after the 3-day contract dissolution time, to say that they can’t do those windows and we have to go with white or simulated wood-grain.  Since the interior is almond, we went with wood grain after having inspected her samples.  That turned out to be a bad choice because of the horrible way Reliabilt makes those windows (see other posts about this).
• the salesperson/project coordinator strongly recommended the contractors, saying they were the best installers, had a great track record, would get the job done quickly, etc.  There is no way she could have said that honestly after experiencing the poor performance during installation.
• the salesperson/project coordinator then would begin a habit of not communicating when we, the homeowners, raised issues.
• the salesperson/project coordinator had to take a week or so medical leave I am guessing it was a week because she didn’t respond to voicemails and texts starting Dec 4, and it went through Dec. 12).  During that time, we got a phone call from another employee at Lowe’s saying she was filling in for the coordinator; however, when she agreed to follow up on a problem that day, she never did contact us before she left work, and we have never heard from her again.
• the store has phone problems.  Every call to Lowe’s takes requires going through the service desk; however, they never pick up the phone until the system has gone through 8-10 cycles of trying the service desk for 15 seconds and then going back through the menu system.
• the store has busy/unavailable/poor managers.  If I do get a hold of the service desk and ask for a manager on duty, I typically get put on hold again, and then half the time I am disconnected.  The other half result in going back to the service desk so they can try again.   The first manager to which I gave the description of the installation problems and need to get the kitchen vents resolved took down my name and number to follow up but never did.  The 2nd time doing that with a manager (but taking down his name for the record) resulted in the salesperson/project coordinator calling me within 10 minutes.
• the salesperson/project coordinator promised new kitchen and dryer vents but tried to have the installers paint the existing rusted one and use a cheap bathroom vent instead of a dryer vent.
• Lowe’s had some kind of problem delivering the windows on time.  The last-mile shipper told us that Lowe’s did not load their truck with the materials so for the first day of installation, the windows arrived late morning, causing a delay.

So the siding team started with three people on the first day.  On day 2, that dropped to two.  On day 8 of work (15 days real time), the other helper quit (evidently this was only the guy’s second house anyway).  We now have a situation where Lowe’s absolutely doesn’t care about the work being done, the installer, Adams Home Exteriors, is putting one person on the project, and we are in the middle.

So I got a call from one of the installers (I had been trying to meet them each morning, but their morning schedule seems to fall behind more and more each day, so I miss them since I need to go to work.  In fact one day, I was told the lead had to change his fuel filter.  I guess he thinks I’m an idiot.  There Is no reason for a fuel filter to be an emergency unless he hadn’t been keeping any tabs on starting problems or high fuel consumption situations.  An old fuel filter is identified by a decreasing fuel pressure.).

Anyhow, the siding lead told me that he painted my old kitchen vent (black while the siding is “saddle” (a tan) ) and sided around it because he said the existing vent was riveted to the house and installed from the inside making it impossible to do anything about.  This was upsetting because we had already told him before they sided that part of the house that the salesperson, Stacey Skelton of Lowes, was doing new vents as a purchasing decision we made at the beginning.  Well, I had to have him cease work on that part of the house until this could be addressed.  Moreover, Shawn Adams, Jack Adams, Lafe (the lead installer), and Stacey Skelton, all had my mobile and home phones and some had my email address(es), but no one even attempted to call about the change they unilaterally made.  I already had messages with Stacey from Dec 4th to contact me immediately (about the lack of siding progress) and she never had.  So I tried the store.  I then got a call from a Rochelle at Lowes that she would help me while Stacey was out.  I explained the problem to her and she said she would look into it and get back with me by the end of the day (Friday, Dec. 8).  Well, she never did, and she left at 3pm.  I know because I called Lowes at 4:30pm to check up on it.  After a half hour on the phone and having to talk with people from odd departments like cabinets, I spoke with a manager also named Stacy who said she would follow up on my problem, although she said it might not be immediately on Friday, and I responded that this weekend would be fine.  Well, as of Sunday night, there has been no contact from Lowes (including from Rochelle and Stacey Skelton).

So I during a snowy weekend (further raising my regret with Lowes and Adams Home Exteriors), I climbed the outside wall to look at the vent cap.  It looked poorly painted black and looked like it was installed on top of the siding with screws mad straight into the siding.  This poor workmanship started upsetting me further.  Today, I fully removed the microwave oven/range hood unit so I could check out the ducting situation from the inside (unfortunately, I fried the light on the microwave doing so), but I found that there was nothing holding the ducting in like Lafe (Adams Home Exteriors) swore would have required all this huge work cutting through the duct and removing, etc. etc.  It was all @$#%.  Better yet, the vent was closed and I could not open it from the inside.  So I went back outside, reclimbed the wall, and found that the bird guard had been pushed so far inside that the flap could not rotate.  They made it so the kitchen vent is completely unusable!  Just to be clear, this is Adams Home Exteriors installers doing this.

So I sent a text to Shawn Adams, setting up a Monday morning meeting at the house to go over the poor installation choices and the correct way to handle it.  FWIW, here are some instructions from one of the many sites I found about this:

“The vents you buy may not be weatherproof. You will have to do the weatherproofing when going through a side wall. First, remove all the siding in the area you will be working in by unzipping it and lifting it off the nail heads. Don’t pull the nails. It will give you a precise location to reinstall your siding. When you determine where your hole will be, you will need to build out the hole area with a square of lumber, probably a 1×8 or 10. Cut the hole through the wall and the attached 1x lumber. Flash over the lumber at least 8″ and let it protrude over the lip of the lumber for a drip edge. Install sticky window tape on bottom, sides and top, in that order. Band the exterior of the 1x with jchannel with proper drip cuts, then reinstall your siding, cutting it to fit the jchannel. Once your vent is placed through the hole, apply elastomeric caulk to the exit wound, prime and paint the wood.” [source https://www.doityourself.com/forum/exterior-paneling-all-exterior-sidings/443130-i-want-run-range-hood-vent-thru-my-vinyl-siding.html ]

To add insult to injury, they installed a cheap louvered vent for my dryer.  I know it’s bad because I’ve had it before and the cheap plastic gets brittle from the heating-cooling and there is no hood or cover.  So I found the Exterior Portfolio accessories listed on their 2017 brochure (given to us by Stacey such that I would think we were getting Exterior Portfolio accessories, but…).  The installed vent is actually a bathroom vent according to Exterior Portfolio.  For them, the only dryer vents are hooded (see http://www.exteriorportfolio.com/uploadedFiles/Content/For_Professionals/Resources/EP_ProductGuide_2017_LR.pdf ).

So therefore, I have two vent problems.  Better yet, they had already installed another siding course above the kitchen vent already and a couple past the dryer vent.