“Zenith is a dirty word in our house. As one of your reviews said "absolutely c..p".
and I wish I had read the reviews before I had the work done. For a start why does it take the salesmen nearly four hours to give you a quote and why go through all that rubbish about ringing the Manager to get the price down? A waste of four hours. Had windows and doors fitted on 2nd August of this year. After fitters went could not unlock the patio door and found various other matters we were not happy with. A salesman called as we were thinking of having other doors replaced - when he came we told him about the problems and he agreed it was not right and rang in about complaint. We had been ringing for several weeks and got no-where but thanks to him we then had a service engineer call on the 29th August who agreed there were problems and took away a list of requirements and said he would order the necessary parts. We now wait and wait and are still waiting despite my ringing every week for an update. Every time I ring they speak to Amanda who is chasing up the order and she will ring us back. She did ring once and said she was waiting for the bits to come in and since then we have heard nothing and so we wait and wait and wait. Spoke to Anabel today and she said she would send an e-mail to Amanda and she will ring me today that was several hours ago and we wait and we wait. Have now cancelled the Carefree Agreement as I cannot see the point in paying over £140 a year for after sales care as they cannot deal with after sales at this point let alone in the future. Have requested to speak to someone in authority but do not seem to be able to get past the girls who answer the phone. Apart from never using Zenith again (I know hindsight is a wonderful thing) has anyone any suggestions as to where I go now? Would a letter to Head Office be any good and if so to whom do I write?”
“These clowns made my house collapse after assuring me through a 'technical survey report' that everything was ok. My partner has now died because of breathing difficulties related to the asbestos that these idiots disturbed without even telling us.”
“I am in the middle of a very stressful garden room/conservatory installation.
The Salesman first visited us on 24 April 2018.
We were told installation would take about 10-14 days and would be completed beginning to mid July.
The Surveyor came 3 May.
By 16 July we hadn’t heard anything and so we started to chase them up.
They finally said they would start on 23 July.
23 July they didn’t come due to staff problems.
They started the digging out on 24/25th July.
26th July they didn’t come due to staffing problems.
Then they worked 26/27th July and came back and finished the basic walls and windows by 31 July..
The team did not know when anyone would come and do roof and rest of making watertight.
They did not know when skip would be collected as this is carried out by a different department, which meant we had to park our car on the road, which costs us money as we need to have parking permits to do that.
Skip men came unannounced one morning on the off chance we were in…which we happened to be.
I chased them up again and was told earliest they could come and do the roof was 13th August.
13/14/15th August they came and did roof and making good the walls.
Electrical team came on 15th August and did 1st fix.
No-one seemed to know when plastering and 2nd fix would happen.
The next day it rained and a leak in roof became apparent.
We phoned them again.
They said they could not send anyone to fix leak until 24th August. Which means I am left with a conservatory with a temporary floor which causes dust to circulate throughout the whole house. I am having to dust and hoover every day to keep it down. I cannot get the floor done until the plastering of the walls is done.
When I mentioned this they said they were not aware of any plastering to be done !! This, even though it is clearly listed on the plans and it is pretty obvious that a briese block wall is going to have to be plastered.
When I pointed that out the response from the lady on the installation team was that they were a windows company not a building company and could not be expected to know that plastering needed to be done.
As no plastering team had been booked the first date they could send someone out to do plastering would be 6/7th September.
They surely should have known that plastering would need to be done.
They need a checklist of work to be done.
Why send builders to start work before all roof and glass ready???
They further say that the 2nd fix electrics cannot be carried out until 19th September.
In the meantime the cement floor is causing lots of dirt and dust throughout house. 8 weeks of shambles and chaos.
The problem seems to be that the Installation Centre who book appointments don’t have all the information from site they need.
There is no overall Project Manager who has been on site to coordinate all the different teams.
Each team only knows their schedule and have no idea on overall project.
I have complained to the salesman who came and he said he would look into to it but that was 5 days ago and he hasn't been back to me.
I cannot find any way of complaining to the company and pointing out the problems to anyone who cares.
Maybe the only way they will take notice of me is if I withhold part of the payment to compensate me for all the stress and extra work.
I am not sure how to do that but I am looking into it.
I have had Zenith do window installations, a porch, a garage door....this is our 5th contract with them. They were fine on windows but the conservatory seems to be too much for them. Their infrastructure cannot seem to cope with it.”
“Just Finished the 3hr sales pitch, 2hrs wasted on this ridiculous convoluted, 'Portfolio' option and various staged calls to management getting the price down from 22k to 8.5k if i paid 200quid there and then, and accepted all the marketing, install dates of their choosing and a confidentiality agreement.
All a pointless and underhanded waste of time. Salesman assured me that the company had been in business for 50yrs and had 99pc positive feedback........ now discovering complete lies. Assured me all fitters work for them directly and in full time employment, which i did not believe for one second. Thank goodness i had to go out as he skipped through his 'usual ' sales speech although knowingly making me an hour late.
The product sales pitch and price were absolutely fine, and they may have had a sale if the salesman hadn't worked to this torturous and scripted routine.”
“Having told the salesman before he came that we only wanted a quote and would not be placing an order that day, it took us nearly 3 hours to get rid of him, during which time his quote was reduced by nearly two thirds! He finally left very disgruntled and without an order!
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and having had Zenith Staybright windows installed 29 years ago and being very happy with both them and the installation we decided to let Zenith install my new windows. We did the read the many negative reviews on numerous review sites, but thought people who just liked to complain wrote them. How wrong we were!
This is our tale of woe. On the 19th October 2016 two teams of fitters from Job Worth Doing, (apparently they are sub-contracted by Zenith to do the installations) arrived at about 10.20am to start removing our old windows and fitting new ones. Bulls in a china shop would best describe how they approached or should wesay “attacked” the work, with broken soffit boards and damaged masonry around the surrounds as they got the old frames out.
Then, having replaced, but not finished off, 7 of the 11 windows, they all packed up and left again soon after 3pm!
On the following day only one pair of fitters returned at about 9.20am. They had to fit the 4 remaining windows, one of them a very big lounge window, as well as finishing off the poorly and partly completed windows left by the other team.
Fortunately it was the slightly more responsible of the two teams who returned, and they worked until well after dark to try to finish the job. They eventually left well after 8pm, having worked by the light of my security light and still having to leave a lot of final finishing to be done.
After 4 weeks, and many calls to Zenith Customer Services and Jobs Worth Doing, plus emails, a fitter finally arrived!
The replacement front window was too big for one fitter, so he hadn’t even brought it with him. He did fit a replacement back bedroom window only to discover that also had a mark on it, so yet another needed! He said he would also need to order new internal beading for some of the other windows as well as wider trim to support sagging soffit boards.
Now after a further 2 weeks we still have the front bedroom window with a large crack from top to bottom, and both back bedroom and bathroom windows with unsightly scratches and marks on them as well as a lot of external finishing to do with regard to completing sealant.
We have phoned yet again to complain, but at the time of writing this, 7 weeks after the original installation, we are still waiting to hear from both Zenith and Job Worth Doing as to when (tempted to say if), the problems are to be sorted out.
Ironically, the large Zenith advertising board is right underneath the cracked and partly completed windows. We are happy to leave it there as a warning to any potential customers!
We leave you to decide whether Zenith windows are for you or not!”
