Universal Windows Direct of Milwaukee

They did an exceptional work

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I had a few estimates and Universal was the best overall for what we wanted done. Our salesperson Mark was professional and even stopped by during the installation to make sure we were happy with everything. The crew that came to do the installation (and it wasn't a small job) were very respectful of our home and our time. Their price and warranty gave us all the peace of mind we needed and will absolutely be using them again in the future. Would ABSOLUTELY recommend them!!!

ABSOLUTE NEVER ENDING NIGHTMARE -- called me in february and said they were doing work in my neighborhood and if they could come and give me an estimate they would give me a $2,0000 discount on the cost. Came in March for initial presentation, sales rep said he knew nothing about a $2,000 promotion and he could never write it up for that. I should have ran at that point, but he talked me into signing a conditional contract for the roofing contingent on me getting financing and the needed porch repairs. He said they did not do that kind of work, but he knew someone who did and he would have him contact me in the next day or so. He told me that the contracted price quote was good for one full year. Never heard from anyone till mid April, Jason came and looked at the porch took some pictures and left, said I would get a price in a day or two.....never heard from anyone again until I came home from vacation at the end of June and had a threatening voice mail on my answering machine that I was going to be turned over to a collection agency for not fulfilling my contract. I called them and told them I never heard anything about the porch work and my contract was contingent on that being completed first and than they said that Jason no longer worked for them and they would be sending someone else out to look at the porch and give me a price . A few days later Rick came and explained how they would use an auger to make three four foot deep holes that would be filled with concrete, place 6x6 posts on these footings and would run doubled2x12's to support the raised porch. I would receive the details in a couple of days through an email...when I agreed to this process and additional cost, I was to send them 1/2 of the total cost and than they would schedule a start date. They were to start 9/3, got a call that morning they were a day behind and would be here 9/4. Finally showed up, and a job that was supposed to take a day and a half is still not done to date which is now 9/24. They would get here around 8:30 and by the time they unloaded everyday and got set up they were usually getting started around 9:30 - 10:00, they would start packing up by 2:00 or 2:30 each day no matter where they were in their work, they would leave the tore off roof wide open for the night...no tarps. When I asked about that the second night they covered about 1/2 of one side of the roof, but always left the shingle and nail mess on the ground. First catastrophe: The porch work was jacked up and put on NO footings, but on a patio block that was 12x12 and metal jack stands supporting a 4x6 . I said that is not what my contract says and I was told, this is just as good or better and it is much faster so they can get to work on your roof right away.... I said no, do it the way the contract reads. He left and came back the next day with two 6x6's, not three as the contract stated and he said he was just going to cut them in half....he got the 2x12's out and came to my door and says and quot;what am I supposed to do with theseand quot;. I thought you have got to be kidding me, he had no clue. I called Milwaukee and told them to get someone here that knows how to frame a porch. He took a phone call and then got under the porch to do his job....hand dug the first hole and put a bag of concrete in there almost completely dry as he had no water to mix it with. I told him I would turn the water on and he said no, I am ok....I went back in so did not see him complete the work as contracted.....do not know still if he poured four foot concrete footings as he was supposed to, but my best guess would be absolutely not....best scenario would be he put one bag of dry concrete mix into a small hole and put a cut in half 6x6 on it and called it good..... Second catastrophe: crew complained that the third layer of roofing was cedar shake and that was more work and now they would have to deck the roof too. Received a call from Milwaukee saying they were going to add another $1,698 to the cost for the decking....what could I do, they already started tearing off, that is when the damages started at a nightmare pace...heavy tools dropped onto my aluminum siding causing deep gouges all the way through the metal, HUNDREDS of dents dings and scratches in my siding all the way around my house, plants destroyed, all the tear off debris shoveled directly into my uncovered air conditioner and onto my electrical wiring. All the metal flashings and channels, cut short of roof edge, left hanging loosely, all seams pointing in different directions and loose and bent and dented. All old materials left in shoveled piles all over my yard and driveway at the end of every work day. Even had huge piles of debris in my neighbors driveway overnight. Hundreds of nails all over yard and driveway and both neighbors yards and driveway every night. The felt was put on with huge holes never even covered and just torn off the rolls leaving trailing jagged flailing pieces that did not even cover the roof and were just shingled over. Pitchfork through my siding at the second floor level of my house ripping off and damaging two rows of siding in front and one row in the back. The solution was for them to remove two rows of siding and run the porch shingles up and around the front of my house. They tore off the j channels and instead of replacing them just put nails through the siding panels to hold them in place. The gutters were being hung placing the straps over the new shingles putting holes in the new shingles, when I complained about that, they switched them to under, but angled all of the gutters away from the downspouts and bowed in the middles so all the water spills over the tops in the center of my house, making water run into my basement, I have garbage cans collecting the water trying to divert it out of my basement as it is now four weeks later and this is still not corrected. There are numerous huge gouges in the concrete of my patio, oil stains from their generator on my patio, tar stains on my white vinyl fence, my patio and my siding. Third catastrophe: the kid they had replacing the skirting they removed from the porch had no clue what to do with all the pre cut pre fitted original siding that had been removed so started pounding them and chopping on them till they were so mangled they could not be put back into the corner channels so he just started pounding black nails through the yellow aluminum siding. They brought some mismatched siding to replace the pieces they gouged holes through. I did not want a white mismatched pieces in the middle of the wall in the middle of my patio so told them to take the bottom piece from the porch skirting to use, when I came back out they had taken three large pieces off of the porch skirting and cut three white pieces, one to two inches short, and put them on the front of my house....spray painted them a different color yellow, overspraying onto my porch steps and letting the paint run down everywhere...there are huge runs in the paint on the front of my house on mismatched siding, they than took brown and clear caulk and spread it all over these huge gaps in huge drops of caulk and said they were finished....when I saw this I told my son to get them off of my property!!! This was the seventh day of their torture on a job that should have taken 1and1/2days. I refused to pay the second half of their money until the production manager came to see the butchered mess they left behind....when he came he said he was so sorry and everything would be fixed the proper way....he took pages and pages of notes and lots of pictures of what needed to be fixed. He said he would personally be back with two other men and the three of them would be spending at least an eight hour day here the following week. He called me a couple of days later to say he would not be coming, but would send three other men....nine days later only two men showed up and they were only here for a Few hours and did not complete any task on the list....they said they would be back the following Friday with the third man and be here earlier and work all day. I am still waiting. Fourth catastrophe: the next day after the roof crew was asked to leave my property I walked into my dining room to see the ceiling tiles falling out of their tracks, now what.....from all the pounding and vibrations the plaster ceiling under the tiles had been broken loose. And half of the dining room ceiling is now on the floor, plaster dust everywhere....the plumbing for the bathroom is also right there and now that is damaged and the house is smelling of sewer gas.....so now in addition to waiting for them to fix all of the outside disaster and get my gutters rehung to keep water out of my basement, I also have to hire a dry wall crew and a plumber to fix all the inside damages..... You really have to see to believe....I have hundreds of pictures documenting this total horrendous nightmare, but don't know how to make it all end.... Please help and warn others that if they sign a contract with universal windows and black shiny trucks show up with the logos All City Contracters ( Their working name) on the side REFUSE to let them touch your home!!!!

Someone knocked on my door offering to set up an appointment to receive a free quote for new windows. The gentleman was very nice and took my information. He gave me a brochure with the appointment time and date on it and said he had another appointment at my neighbors house earlier that day. My appointment time came and went and I never received a call and nobody showed up. Same thing happened to my neighbor. I will not be using them for new windows and will continue to shop around

If you are not interested in high pressure sales and a used car salesman mentality then you will not be interested in Universal Windows. Their motto is NOT to leave your house till they have a signature on a contract. They were not pleased when we told them there was NO way that was happening and that we would be meeting with other suppliers. The salesman starting making phone calls to his and quot;managerand quot; and kept dropping the price to get us to sign which only cheapened the perceived quality of their product. They continued to call us almost daily. It was border line harrassment. We stopped answering the phone and after serveral weeks they finally went away. It was a nightmare. Their staff is young, overly agressive and have been trained poorly on how to earn business. I would not recommend contacting them especially since every other supplier we spoke to had similar if not the exact same product quality, conducted themselves professionally and respected that spending that much money was a decision that we needed time to consider and think about.

Disgusting. What a waste of my life. My roof is 14 squares (10'x10'). The estimator/salesman quoted me for 30 squares. I don't know what he thought that kinda of dishonesty was gonna get him, certainly not my business. The quote was $14,000. A local, reputable place in town estimated just under $6,000. The sales pitch was supposed to by 90 minutes, according to the company. He arrived promptly, but stayed for 2 and a half hours. I should have kicked him out, but didn't know if I needed that bridge before I burned it. The product was unimpressive. Most of the pitch was an attempt to scare me into using no one else by emphasizing worst-case scenarios (that could be made up for all I know). I probably don't need to say, I refused his price. Still getting estimates.

The estimator arrived promptly and was cordial. He took laser measurements from a ladder without going up on the roof (we have a ranch home). He set up an I-Pad and I knew we were in for a lengthy presentation. While it was the most thorough presentation we ever received regarding a roof, I thought it was inconsiderate to take over two hours of our time without even asking what information we needed. After hand-writing pricing options on a white board he explained that we had to commit on the spot to get those prices, and that he wasn't coming back since they had so many other estimates to do. We went with another company that was less than a third of the quoted price.

I would recommend them. We had a very good experience there. We liked their siding products. We looked at few other houses of our age that they had done the work on and that's what exactly we were looking for as our house is 52 years old. The crew supervisor was Troy and he had estimated two days and they had all the work done here in one day except for the fact what was on the house was new and we never knew they were here. There was no piece of cardboard, screw, nail or anything. They cleaned the whole house. Basically, the boxes got dropped the night before and next day we got home and we couldn't tell they were here.

A canvassar was walking down the driveway as I was coming home. He then waited at the end of the driveway for me to get out of my car. (I happened to be listening to a news story, so was in no hurry to get out.) He finally walked across the street to a neighbors. I went inside, and my wife told me that he was trying to arrange a roofing estimate (which we are in need of). She had told hime to call and set up an appointment. Instead, he came back to the door. He was wearing a Shirt with the company name and a ID badge that had NARI and Angies list Prominently displayed. He asked when someone would be available to do an estimate. I told him that Friday would work, and started to set up a time. He interrupted asking if both of us would be home at the time. When told no, he tried to set up different times expressing how flexible they could be. When he was told explicitly that the little time my and my Wife's schedues overlap is limited, and spent as a family. It was clear from this that a high pressure sales presentation would be part of the estimate. (confirmed upon checking Angies list). The canvassar tried offering various options ignoring that getting my Wife and I together at the same time was not feasible. When it finally sank in that the estimate would have to be provided when only one of us was available, he promptly left. I have been soliciting bids from other companies for the work needed (roofing, Soffit vents, possibly gutters). None has required a sales presentation or lengthy negotiations. Just a paper bid and occasionally product samples and brochures. Bids have come in between $5500 and $8000. The last time we sat through a sales presentation for this work, the bid was for $16,000, and not for the more expensive option I was asking about (Metal roofing - never got a price on that from a company that allegedly specialized in it).

Had scheduled a quote for a front entry door for Saturday March 23 at 9:00 a.m. At 9:30, when no one showed up or called, my husband called in. Apparently there was no one in at the fron desk. They said they could have someone out to us within 45 minutes. 45 minutes later no one came. Husband called again, said it would be within 15 minutes. We were about to cancel and say forget it, but someone finally showed up, almost an hour and 45 minutes past the scheduled time. (Prior to this Saturday of the scheduled quote, the company had called on Thursday to confirm, and called about 2 hours after that to re-confirm, then they called one more time Friday) We got the quote and the price seemed decent, however again today the company called and apologized for no one coming to give us our quote and wanted to know if we could reschedule. Where is the communication here? I don't want to spend all of my money on a company I am not even sure any of the employees are on the same page.

Satisfactorily with compromise.

Roofers came two weeks earlier because of a cancellation, they arrived promptly and in about 2.5 days a crew of maybe 6 put a roof on our house. They did damage some plants alongside the house, but I obviously wasn't too mad.

A canvasser for Universal Windows and Roofing came to our house and asked if we needed any work done. When we confirmed that we were in the market for a new roof, he scheduled a representative to come out to our house the following week. The salesman arrived as scheduled along with another salesman that he was training. They immediately inspected our roof from the outside, including actually going on the roof and taking pictures which they showed to us later, and the inside via the attic for a total of about 20 minutes. From there they went back to their car to work up a quote and gather materials which took about 15 minutes while we waited. At this point we were subjected to about an hour and a half computer presentation complete with all of the stereotypical salesman tactics including lots of upselling, scare tactics, pressuring, exaggeration, talking themselves up and berating other companies, and the list goes on. The presentation itself was very informative and educated us on the different roofing options available for underlayment, flashing, vents, shingles, etc. After the presentation finally came to an end that's when the hard sell began. Even though we expressed concerns over the cost and necessity of the more expensive materials such as ridge vents instead of turtle vents, top of the line shingles and replacing all flashing, the quote that we were provided at the end included all of those options and I'm not even sure the lesser options are even offered. The main quote that was good for up to a year was about $19,000. They offered a certain percentage off if we agreed to sign up that night that would have brought the cost down to around $15,000. What the exact amount was I couldn't tell you because it was written in pencil on a scratch piece of paper and taken with the salesmen when they left. They also offered a certain percentage off if we signed up within 30 days. Again, I couldn't tell you exactly what that cost was because it was written on the same piece of paper that was taken with them but it was somewhere around $17,000. When we declined signing up with them with the reason being that we needed more time to research and gather other quotes the mood changed quickly and the salesman became angry as they continued the hard sell. Finally they left after a total of about two and a half hours. We eventually received three other quotes from local roofing companies that ranged from $6,200 to $7,800. The company we ended up going with did an excellent job and we couldn't be more pleased with the service or product which included a 50 year shingle warranty and synthetic underlayment. The only big differences were that we had our old turtle vents replaced instead of changing to ridge vents and we did not have the flashing replaced. So to summarize, if you want the Cadillac of all roofs and don't mind paying 250%-300% more than most other companies than Universal might be the best place for you but the high cost was definitely not worth it to us and the and quot;Salesman 101and quot; tactics were very annoying. Also be aware that there have been 8 complaints with Universal over the past 3 years with the Better Business Bureau. The other 3 companies that we received quotes from had a total of 0 complaints.

They called and asked to come and give us a quote for additional windows, we think they have a good product and excellent window installers.This was the second time we would be dealing with this company and thought we should give them another chance. Our salesman, Mike, gave us a very good price on the windows to make up for the troubles we had with our first installation. We thought that was a very nice gesture. Mike assured us that we would not experience any mix-ups and that everything would go smoothly. We scheduled the windows to be installed on Friday, 08/17/12 at 10:00 a.m. in the morning. The day of the installation, the workers showed up at 7:00 a.m., my husband and I came home to find some voice mail messages from the installers wondering where we were! I called the office and was very irate, they set up appointment for the next day, which I thought was very accommodating, I also asked for our salesman to call me back. Mike called and I explained how upsetting having another incident happen again was for us, and I stated I wanted to be compensated for our trouble since we would not be paid for our time off work. Mike was very nice, said he would talk to his superior and call me back. He called back and gave us an additional 10 percent off the price of the windows. That, we thought, was a very generous gesture.The installers came the next day, right on time, were very professional, did an EXCELLENT job on the outside installation of the windows, they look fantastic! But, instead of putting clear caulk on the inside of the windows, as it was explained to us, the man put white, and it unfortunately looks ugly. At this time I am at a loss how this can be corrected. Mike said he was going to call after the installation to see how things went, but it has been 10 days now and I have not heard from him. Its a company with a good product, wonderful installers, really I can't say enough about how GOOD our windows look on the outside, even our neighbors have come over to see them, they just need a bit of tweeking with their communication between schedulers and installers, customers and salespeople. We would deal with them again because in the end, its the people who actually do the installation work who really count, and they have definitely got that in their favor!

I was really impressed with the excellent service and work that was recently done to my home. Everything was finished in an orderly and timely manner. The customer service I received from start to finish was excellent! Very friendly, nice and knowledgeable staff. I will definitely be giving your name out to anyone that asks. Thanks again for all your hard work! Job well done!

I received a phone call from Universal Windows letting me know that they would be in my area and asked if I would like a free quote on anything for my home. I told the gentleman that I would like to get a quote for my patio door and some windows. We set up the appointment for a time that worked for me. When the rep came out he showed me so many options and let me know about the great deal that they had going on for free installation. I was very pleased with the rep and the price so I agreed to the contract and gave him my down payment. The next day I received a call from someone scheduling a time to come out and get the final measurements for my door and windows. In a matter of 5 weeks my windows and door were installed and look WONDERFUL!!!!! I am so happy that I decided to do this project for my home. I will definitely use Universal Windows again for any other home improvement projects that I will have done.

I chose to use this company cause I had a gentleman come to our home and offer a free one year estimate for my roofing and the gutters. Since I was looking into getting them both done anyways we set up the appointment. The consultant that came out was very knowledgeable and did not pressure me to do anymore than I wanted to have done. The price that he gave me was very reasonable and the products were great as well. A few days after signing the contract I received a call from the production manager to schedule a time for the final measure, the guy came out and did the measure and then the next day I received another phone call from the production manager to schedule the installation. Within 3 weeks my new roof and gutters were installed. I am very pleased with this company and I would recommend them to all my friends and family.

We ordered and paid (1/2 the amout owed) for our doors in March fron Universal Windows and Doors, and we asked them for a specific date in June for the installation. They said that, there would be no problem installing the doors at that time. Well, June came and a week before the doors were set to install, we had not heard from them. So I called them, and left a couple messages. Finally when I got a call back from them, they said that they could not install the doors at that time. When I asked them why, the lady said the doors were ordered late. I then asked them when they expected the doors to be in, and they thought they would get them in by July 1st. The date of July 1st was over two weeks from the week we had asked them to install our doors. I asked them to call me as soon as the doors were in. July 1st came, and so at around 2pm I called them again, and asked them if the doors were in, the person that answer the phone was like um, I don't know, I will have to get back to you. I honestly didn't expect to hear back from them, but I did. They called me back at 6pm that day and told me the doors were in. I asked them when could they install the doors, and fortinatly they could install them on July 5th. Now the person installing them did an excellent job. The doors looked great, and I honestly expected more damage from the removal of 50+ year old doors, but no. I did findout however the installer was a consultant. But again, very happy with how they installed the doors and how they look and close etc. Now, on the contract, they did say that they would re-key my garage door lock. They did not do this, nor did they replace the lock. On their word, they said they would replace the lock on the garage door in a couple weeks. That was July 5th. It is now August 9th, and I have called them several times, including the Boss (John) and they have not returned my call. Even though the doors look great and the installer did a great job, because they did not fully honor their contract, they are very unorganized, and they still have not replaced my garage door lock, I will never do business with them again.