Oct 04, 2019
The window issue
If you look ever so closely you will see moisture between the two pieces of glass. Almost impossible to see so you will just have to trust me.
Towards the end of the summer we became aware of a problem with a set of windows in what is called our add a room. Except it is really not a separate room but part of our great room as we took out the wall between the two units. Our understanding is that we have a lifetime warranty with Gentek Windows. Because I am not as sharp as usual and falling behind I asked Colin to contact Gentek and sort things out. Long story short, he made many calls and kept getting shut down ” we are waiting for paperwork”. So I took over last week, the very end of September. I insisted on answers. Yes insisted. Five phone calls later ( to the local company here in Canada ) and within four business days I had my answers. I was not happy with the first answer. Why did we have to wait close to five weeks ( and at least five calls from Colin ) to be told that we needed to place a call to the warranty department in Ohio in order to get our issue resolved? Why did she not tell me this just over four weeks ago? She said that she was waiting for paperwork, it was a lie.
Last Friday I called and spoke to someone different who never called me back. Monday I called and spoke to our main person who said she would call back within an hour. Seven hours later I called her again and that is when I discovered that we had to contact the US company but only online 8-O. First she could not find a number to call and eventually gave me a long distance number to call. Her excuse was that they never handle warranty issues. Five minutes later ( on my own ) I had two 800 numbers to use. The first number I called, I discovered that by pressing three, I got to the warranty department 😀 Then I discovered that I had to file my request online. Perhaps it was because our address is Canadian that their system would not accept our address. So I had to call back and again was on hold for about 15 minutes for the second time. By now Colin had given up and said that we should just pay for the window to be replaced.
However it was not just the one window but also the one above that you can see that the seal was breaking.
We have three of these windows in a row. We actually have about 25 windows from this company in our add a room. No idea the exact cost but close to $30,000.
This is the second park model home that we have designed and built here in the park. Our homes have all been custom built. The home that we are in now was completed the fall of 2012. We moved in and lived here for less than two weeks before we headed south to Mexico for the winter. When we returned in the spring we discovered that the builder of our add a room had committed suicide shortly after we left Canada. Basically that meant that we had no warranty for a very expensive add a room ( 10’x 44′). However we were under the understanding that our windows had a lifetime warranty. What a struggle the repair of this one window has been. Fortunately once I became involved with the Ohio warranty department I was assured within one hour that both widows would be built by the Seattle factory and shipped out on October 16th all at no charge ( the local gal that Colin had been chatting with said we would have to pay at least 50% ). I then contacted the local company and the head guy was shocked at what I been through. He was then surprised when I told him that we were leaving October 25th and needed this competed before then. I made a point of explaining how disappointed we were with his employee who and had steered us wrong over and over. Why could she not have told us four weeks ago that we had to call the Ohio warranty department? So he is going to do his best to be sure that our windows are actually shipped on the 16th of October and installed before we leave on the 25th. We can only hope that this will actually happen. So much energy expended on something that I eventually resolved in an hour.
The flu shot poll, an update from my blog last night. As you can see 43.77% in our local area never get a flu shot. The survey was based on 7187 people. Interesting!
The following is very sad. There was a tropical storm this past Monday and as a result there was some damage in Mazatlan as well on the Isla, but even more along the coast further south.
Power was out in various parts of the Isla for close to 24 hours.
The basketball court had damage as well as other parts of the Isla including our friends Joyce and Ken’s home.
Thanks to our friends Brad & Jenny ( who made a special visit to the Isla ) as well as Joyce and Ken who both sent us photos today showing our site.
For the most part we appear to have been spared major damage. In some of the closer up photos we know that we need to do some palm frond replacements. Thank you both for taking the time to check out our Isla home. We can now rest easy.
But what truly upsets me are the turtles. I have been involved in turtle rescue one way or another ( walking the beach and locating nests ) for about 20 years now since our Acapulco days. I was devastated to read this article about how this same storm destroyed more than 8 million turtle eggs. That is a massive loss especially as 7 of the 8 turtle species in the world come ashore here to lay their eggs along these beaches.
A horrific loss.
Even more amazing is that one of those 7 species , the Olive Ridley Turtle, was found very recently here in our Canadian waters. This screen capture was dated October 3rd.
Nature is amazing but it is up to us to keep it alive and of course our climate.
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Too bad about the issue with your windows hope that they finally get fixed for you soon.
Sad to hear about the storms there in Mexico and all the turtle eggs being lost.
It really would be nice to get them replaced before we leave. They get the brunt of the winter wind, rain, snow and cold off the lake. You can imagine that I won’t be very happy to not have them replaced before we leave. Those last two tropical storms did some major damage these past few weeks, much of which I have not even mentioned.
Companies love to sell their products but don’t like to live up to their warranties.
That is a great loss of all the turtle eggs.
Just catching up.
Be Safe and Enjoy your upcoming adventure.
It’s about time.
So glad that you are finding time to read some blogs again. I am still teary about the turtles.
Press one, press two, please hold, horrible music and on and on and then you can’t understand them anyway. Good for you and your perseverance and…for complaining. Shouldn’t be like that but they know most people will give up…just wrong.
I would have complained sooner and been stronger but Colin wanted to wait. I agree, not too many have the energy to persevere until they get the end result.
So sad about the sea turtle eggs. That Ridley turtle was found at Port Alberni, not too far from where we live. So lucky the guy who found it was a scuba diver as a hobby and knew it was not the right kind of turtle for our area. Apparently we have had leatherback turtles near the island before as they can withstand the cold water. I am really hoping he survives. The Vancouver Island aquarium is doing updates on Berni https://mmrpatients.org/patient/lo1901-berni/
Thank you so much for the update on Berni.
*I mean Vancouver aquarium 🙂
wow that’s a lot of damage
was that basket ball court the one near us where they play pickleball???
The week before there was another storm at high tide and many of the restaurant palaces were damaged or destroyed. Yes that is the same place that pickleball is played at. It has not been an easy few weeks for the Isla.
I sure hope you get your windows fixed before you go. That is so sad about all the damage and the loss of all those turtle eggs 🙁
I was sick at what happened with the turtle eggs but nature does its thing. If they can’t replace the windows before we leave it will have to wait until April.
Hope this isn’t a duplicate but my finger slipped and I lost my response…I think. Anyway hope you get everything resolved before you leave…won’t be long now.
BTW you can use those green tomatoes to make a tasty “faux” raspberry freezer jam.
Have a safe trip!
No duplicates, thanks for making the effort to comment a second time. Yummy to the freezer jam idea. So far they are all ripening and we still have two cucumbers growing but ever so slowly. they survived the frost and cold temps.
the Mexican’s are so resilant, all will be well when we arrive. FD says so. 🙂 Looking forward to seeing you both, huggs fernanda