“When we did our extension in 2016, we decided on Origin french doors because of their advertised high-end quality and 20-year warranty. Ordering Origin has turned out to be a nightmare, a waste of money, and years of regret. Please, avoid them if you can and avoid the heartache that we have had, wasting £7,000 on doors which we could have got more robust from a cheap double-glazing company.
They recommended Herts Bifold as a local installer. Their installers are also awful. We have had nothing but poor service and rudeness from them. They try to get out of everything, if they can.
Firstly, they didn't measure up correctly (luckily we spotted this), then they accidentally transposed the doors on the final blueprints- they were all opening a certain way on all the blueprints except the final version, which they were the opposite way around (which we did not spot), which they then refused to rectify the mistake until we made huge complaints and wrote several letters.
After 3 years, the door handle on one set of doors broke. After another round of angry emails, where Origin refused to take responsibility and Herts Bifold refused to do anything without being pushed, the door handles were replaced. We discovered that the problem was the flimsy one-coil return spring in the handles. You can't even get one-coil springs in this country; they are usually 2.5-5 turns. of course one thin wire is going to break easily through normal wear and tear.
A year later (now, 2020), the door handles broke again. This time we wrote to Origin to say that the fault was with the poor quality door handles and that we would like a replacement of all the handles with something more robust. They told us to speak to Herts Bifold again.
Herts Bifold asked us to fill in a whole load of paperwork and provide photos, even though I had forwarded them our emails from 2019 with all the paperwork attached.
They then refused to replace the door handle as it "wasn't broken"; until I then complained again to say that the door WAS broken because it wasn't latching because of the issue.
They've now told us they've ordered one replacement handle from Origin, even though two are broken (on the inside and on the outside). This won't be fixed for a month.
I have written to Origin, complaining that the handles are not fit for purpose under the Trades Description Act. They have responded to say that they have no problems with them and will replace them if broken.”
