Tradewinds LLC

After many months of gathering quotes from a number of companies we decided to go with Lowe's based on name recognition and reputation. After contacting the Project Supervisor (the head of outside contracted sales) at the Lowe's store in Suwanee GA, he visited us in our home and gave us what seemed a reasonable and competitive quote. Lowes sub-contracted the job to Tradewinds LLC and the Lowe's representative assured us of their competency and worthiness, as well as his being available to us should we have any questions or concerns. We were told that the project would be completed in a week to a week and a half. The project took over a month. Why so long? There were a number of factors including a few beyond Tradewinds' control (such as waiting for the City to issue a permit), however, Tradewinds apparently hires laborers who work where they are sent and so our job was not their top priority, even though it was ours. To be clear, the workers were extremely nice as was the job forman who was polite and responsive to our questions and concerns if mostly in a reactive way. By that I mean that when we saw evident flaws in the product or construction, we had to ask them to be addressed; these issues were not handled proactively. I do not want Tradewinds to take the entire brunt of this review; having gotten the sale, virtually each and every call to our Lowe's representative went unanswered, deferring to the job forman even when we asked to speak to him directly. It was not until we contacted Lowe's national customer service hotline that a call was finally returned. Based on our experience with Lowes and Tradewinds, whose owners also would never return a call once the job was awarded, we could not recommend either company. Bottom line - the decks are ok but they should be great for the money and aggravation spent on getting this job completed.. And to be clear - This review would be much more positive if the customer service had just been better.

The initial consultation with the company went great. We planned out exactly where the fence would go and proceeded to set up the installation date. On the date of the installation, nobody showed up at 10am (the scheduled time). I called to find out what the issue was and was told that there was a scheduling problem and people had called in sick and they were not sure if they were coming. I had taken the day off work to be at the house to oversee the installation, and would have liked to have been notified of the delay so that I did not need to waste vacation time. They did finally show up later that afternoon and got part of the fence posts installed. However, the original scheduled completion date (the next day) was delayed as well due to scheduling issues, and we had to wait another week for them to come back and finish the fence. They were not very punctual on the reschedule date either, though they did show up prior to noon. The fence was finished while I was at work because I could not take another day off, and when I got home there were a couple of problems. The guys had dumped excess concrete from a partially used bag behind my air conditioning unit, and there was a bent piece at one of my gates, which looked pretty bad. I called to see if they could return to clean up the mess and fix the part that I was not happy with, and it took days to get a response. I finally had to get the Lowes installation team involved in orer to get any kind of feedback. Due to some rainy weather, there was a delay in the repairs, which allowed the cement to solidify behind the air conditioner. It took weeks to get the problems resolved. They did finally come out and take care of it, but I really believe that if we had not subcontracted them through Lowes, that they would have taken longer (if they had come back at all). We were very greatful to the Lowes team for helping to get the issues resolved. What also surprised me about this company was that they told us that next time we had a project, we should skip Lowes altogether and go straight to them so we can save money. I have to think that this is against their agreement with Lowes, and the people at Lowes were really shocked and upset to hear about the attempt to undersell them. We'll definitely not be going direct anytime soon. We cannot chance that for a little bit of money saved a job may not get accomplished, or not get accomplished correctly. While I do not know if that would be the case, my experience with them leads me to believe so. I rarely got a phone call back unless I got the Lowes team involved, and I gave the company's information to a guy that I work with who needed fence work done. He left them a message back in September and still hasn't heard back from them.