It is regrettable to have to write this honest review of my experience with Clera Windows. Over the years I have had many of contractors perform work on my property, while not all have been without flaw, I have always felt there was a two-way communication, and as a customer, I have always been happy with the end result. My experience with Clera has been anything but what I have become accustomed to. Look at the streams of positive reviews, my assessment is that when things go right, the customer is genuinely happy. It is easy to get a 10 when you get it right. When a company lives up to it's marketing material, getting a 10 should also happen when things go wrong.
Some perspective. I have a large number of large windows in my home. The entire job would be somewhere between 60k and 70k to complete. Due to the number of custom finishes in my windows (window seats, etc), I planned this as three phases. I decided to go with Clera for a number of reasons:
1. One point-of-contact for sales, install, and service.
2. Commitment to work with me through all three phases over a period of up to 24 months.
3. I felt the sales presentation was honest. I did not feel the same with some other sales pitches.
4. I like the product. I like how it looks both on the exterior and interior when installed correctly.
In April of 2017 I had the first phase of the project completed by Clera. There are parts of the installation that are absolutely beautiful and which I could not be happier with. There are some parts, however, that came as an absolute shock. To start with, the previous windows that were installed in my home were flush installed without brick mold as the home is a tudor revival. The new installation was placed directly onto the tudor board (photo attached). This has a number of problems:
1. I can no longer replace the tudor board as planned without complete removal of the windows.
2. If any moisture gets behind the tudor board it has a direct path to the interior as there is no seal.
3. if any moisture gets behind the tudor board and it evaporates the caulk can bubble (as seen in the photo).
At no point in time do I feel this install approach clearly communicated to me. The sales rep did commit to make it right - but 100% at my cost. I was willing to chock this issue as a miscommunication, not huge deal, it was caught early and would only entail about an additional $4500 of work to get to a satisfactory resolution. Disappointing that Clera was not willing to work with me yet I could take this as a learning opportunity and move on. That being said, I was VERY disappointed that the sales rep immediately starting positioning himself as having to negotiate with the installer to see how much the labour would be, etc; as a customer of Clera I do not want to know these details, they are not of my concern. This is why I chose a one-stop shop. I also was verbally assured the caulk would never fail. There is no such thing as never. Even a year after the caulk is already failing.
There were other more minor issues with the install, nothing that could not be quickly rectified. I attached an example of the finish work where a Imagine garden door (beautiful door) was installed. You can see that the door did not come up to the original finished floor (I installed a piece of still unfinished oak to bridge the gap) and the bottom of the jamb looks like it was cut with a reciprocating saw.
There were numerous other issues with I will spare the reader. This should be a sufficient bases of material to make my point.
If you are still reading this lengthy review, the following paragraphs is where I hope to really illustrate how bad things can get. I was willing to work with Clera on continuing with the project. As I stated, I am happy with the product itself. I had a number of exchanges with the sales rep to schedule phase two (approx 17k). Unfortunately, there were more exchanges than should have been necessary as the rep appeared to have forgotten the terms of the original agreement. I completely understand he surely has numerous customers and we would get it resolved in a number of interactions. In the final interaction I feel we were in complete alignment - the quote looked good. There was a modest price increase year-over-year (to be expected) but I was shocked at the fact he asserted this cost was entirely due to US trade tariffs.
Ironically, I don't care why prices have gone up. We have had a number of domestic/provincial policies come into play the past 12 months that surely must be driving up cost. Oil prices are up, etc. I was tired of how hard it was to just get an updated quote. I felt I was constantly being misdirected, and being subjected to smoke sales tactics. I responded with how I felt. I was tough on him, I respected he was in sales and I appreciate the task of following a playbook. I was fine with the cost but tired of this being so hard. I asked to accelerate the project, and asked the quote be expanded to cover a much larger portion of the remaining install (approx 30k). His response was, in short: he had tried his best, he was insulted, and I was longer a customer Clera is interested in doing business with.
So, I find myself out of pocket approx 20k for the existing installed windows, about 10k for an architect to try and work through issues, and having to pause/re-spec a 55k siding project that was completely detailed to work with these windows. I have lost countless nights of sleep.
I am really happy for all of the customers with positive reviews. This is how it should be. However, sometimes things do go wrong. We work through issues first by communicating. Sometimes as part of communication people hear things that they do not want to hear. The first time a company and a customer have a disagreement on intent or perception, does not justify all of the companies commitments to that customer are unilaterally dismissed.
I did my homework, I did everything I could to attempt to make this project work. This is my story. Thanks for reading.
Richard
Post response edit:
In response to the company response, I do not feel any attempt was made to make the customer happy. I only ever heard a sales rep who shouted at me when I asserted that I was unhappy. There was no attempt by any additional person from the company to have a dialog. What I see is a classic case of 'bury it and move on to the next customer'. Calling out the customers name in response illustrates a complete disregard for the privacy of their customer's. I am still a customer I have 20k worth of the company's product and services installed and not being warranted. It appears to be a continuing effort to deflect all shortcomings entirely onto the customer.
I have had some craftsmen out to the house to attempt to move this project forward. I have been assured that my concerns are not unfounded and to quote one gentlemen 'the method the windows are installed are pretty much the worst possible way you can install a window short of putting it in backwards'.
