OLD SOUTH LIGHTING & IRONWORKS

What ever you do, please , please be careful when buying windows from Old South, the company owned by Robby Turner. I ordered over $30,000.00 worth of custom made windows from this guy and not only did it take close to 6 months before they were delivered, but they were built to the wrong specifications. I had ordered Low E glass and the glass was not Low E verified by 2 window experts. Robby even sent me a bogus spec sheet saying the windows were Low E, which he randomly pulled off the internet. I asked him the name of the glass manufacturer that made the windows and he said he wasn't even sure. He said he wasn't a glass expert. I told him when you sell someone $30,000 woth of windows you need to be a glass expert. I had ordered flat mullions on the windows and the mullions were raised on the exterior of windows. Even though, the spec sheet specified flat mullions, he tried to convince me that he never promised flat mullions. The window finish that he delivered looked like mirrored commercial window. It did not even comply with the code of the subdivision in which I live. After, I complained to Robby Turner, he sent me an email saying he would not fix the windows because he claimed that I bereated him and that he had never been talked to by a customer, the way that I had talked with him, in his 20 years of business. Little did he know that I recorded the whole conversation and not once did I raise my voice to this guy. Also, to put icing on the cake, the double pane windows started leaking within a few months of installation. Moisture formed between four of the the panes and eventually I'm sure that all of the windows would have failed. If you, have bought windows that were specified to be Low E from Old South, be sure to have a window expert test them as I did. There is a meter that is used to detect Low E coating. CHANCES ARE YOUR WINDOWS ARE NOT LOW E. PLEASE BE CAREFUL IN DEALING WITH THIS GUY. Overall, the quality of the windows was beyond terrible, very low quality and the customer service was horrible. HE MADE MY WINDOWS IN CHINA! Please contact me if you have any questions. I would be happy to discusss. My email is brads1960@gmail.

Robby's price was more competitive than some other local vendors that I received quotes from for the same job. When speaking with Robby he seemed very knowledgeable about his trade and the way that he described his process and work made me convinced that he would do a good job, so I chose to go with his business. The initial jobs were for iron railings that went up the stairways in the home and a driveway gate. Robby had many different designs to choose from for the railings and did a good job explaining the process for the building of railings and the installation. I would say that railings turned out very nice. He suggested a hand painted finish on top of the iron railings which made the railing look really nice. I was building a new home at the time and he did not cause any delays in completing my home with the railings. They were delivered in a timely manner. It is because of his delivery of the railings and the way they look that brings his rating from a D to a C. The problems with the driveway gate have at this point overshadowed everything else with the experience. Concerning the gate, Robby and I discussed some different options and he gave me several different renderings. He did a good job designing the gate based on my ideas of what I wanted it to look like. The agreed to delivery date on the gate was much further past the time that he originally told me. Robby indicated that the gate should not be hung during the construction for fear that the other sub-contractors that would lead to future repairs. That made sense to me so we agreed to wait until closer to the time that the home was completed. As the home was completed I told Robby that I was ready for the gate. It took three months to get the gate installed from the time that I started requesting it after we agreed to wait to the end of the build. Once the gate was installed it really look great. I was not happy with the color that we selected but that was not a decision by Robby but by me. I did however notice that the gate was starting to get some white spots on the gate. The gate was initially powdered coated but Robby told me that the gate required some "hand touch up". The hand touch with the clear coat was whiting. So after noticing several spots, and the entire gate beginning to look pretty bad I started asking Robby to have it repaired. Robby told me that it would not be feasible to have it re-poweder coated because of how thin the metal was on the gate and suggested they could do a hand finish on the gate. It took almost 7 months to get Robby to come back out and fix the gate. Since he was going to fix it, we went ahead and changed the color on the gate. This redo occurred in October of 2013. For the first couple of months the gate look really nice with the new hand finish but again I started noticing some issues. That was an added cost to the initial price but I believed that was fair since I was asking for a different color. I found a spot on the top of the gate that was rusting and noticed some faint cloudiness appearing a couple months later. It took several phone calls, texts and emails before Robby finally got someone out to touch up the gate. It was during that time that one of his employees commented on how bad the gate was fading. Shortly after the touch up of the rust, Robby and I texted back and forth about the touch up and he said if he had know the gate was faded as badly he would have schedule the job differently. Needless to say I hadn't told him about the fading before that visit so I did expect much different of a response. But I did recall Robby telling me that it was possible in a couple of months the gate would require some touch up because he was working with a new clear coat. This is where things deteriorated so badly. The gate now is almost complete faded. I have had nothing but difficulties in trying to remedy this problem with Robby. Robby had ignored text messages, emails and voicemails. When he did respond it was always an excuse that he is backed up with other work, the clear coat he has is failing and not enough people at his business to help. Most of that information came from impromptu visit to his business since he would not call me back. There was one conversation that I had with him approximately 3-4 months ago where Robby started dropping the f-bomb on the phone and yelling about the way I was treating him. I remained calm because I wanted to get the $3,500 (which included an electronic opener) repaired and looking great again and I did not think a shouting match would have made it happen any sooner. To his credit he did apologize about his language and stated he had been under a tremendous amount of stress because of all the work that was backing up. Before that conversation I believed that my gate would be fixed but after that I had serious reservations. Well here I am, six months later from the reporting of the initial problem. The only thing I get from Robby now is, he is working on the clear coat and trying to find "the right formula". "Mike, I think we almost have it, as soon as I get it right, your next". Well guess what folks, the gate is still faded. At this point I have no confidence that the gate will be fixed and will start looking towards other remedies. I will not blame Robby for a faulty clear coat product as he has claimed to have used in my instance; however, I do believe that he has erred by not treating this problem and finding a solution quickly. At this point Robby is NOT standing behind his word to warranty his work and give me an adequate and time repair. Robby has not been punctual, the work quality has not been good in some instances. I would be gravely concerned with any large project that he is selected for knowing that there may be time delays and questions about the duration of the quality. If there are problems with the quality I would not be confident that he would fix the problem.