Gem Windows and Doors

I should have paid attention to the many negative reviews about GEM on this site! Last year (2014) I ordered an expensive glass patio door with interior mini-blinds and a phantom-type retracting screen. The salesman Phil assured me that the requests I had itemised (most of them in writing) could be honoured. I told him that I wanted a particular type of mini-blind with a single control, a regular handle on the screen rather than the fingertip pull ones in their showroom, and the screen’s tension needing to be reduced, as my physical problems make it difficult for me to open otherwise.

When the door was installed (by my own contractor), I saw that almost all aspects of it were wrong. Although the door itself looked okay, with the three-point locking system I had ordered (that’s why GEM does get one point out of 10), it opened the wrong way, the mini-blinds were wrong, the screen handle was wrong, and the screen tension was way too tight. I phoned Phil many times, and he finally came by to see the door. He was extremely rude and belligerent and refused to discuss the door or mini-blinds or handle. He said that GEM could change any aspect of an order without notice because “it’s in the fine print—you should have read the fine print!” He said I could talk to my lawyer if I insisted, but it would do no good to pursue legal action against GEM because “We got lots of lawyers!” He did agree to send someone to adjust the screen tension, which he said would be easy to do.

He never did. After several more phone calls to Phil's cell phone and his promising to call back and not doing so, I called GEM directly and was told that Phil was no longer with them. I spoke with Jim, who seems to be a member of the family business. He told me that Phil had been fired. He said that Phil had done many things wrong with other customers even worse than what he did with me, and they had kept him on because he was the same ethnic group (really!), but finally they had to get rid of him. Jim sounded very apologetic and accommodating and assured me he would do everything he could to make things right. This sounded promising.

I went to meet Jim at their showroom, and he had changed his tune. He now said that the mini-blinds would only be replaced if I paid extra money to do so, because “there’s nothing wrong with them.” Well, I didn’t order this type–if you order a Mercedes and get a Ford, that’s wrong, even if the Ford runs well. The blinds also did not close tightly enough for full privacy, and he said that all interior mini-blinds have this defect, something Phil had neglected to inform me. He kept reminding me that my contractor had failed to get Phil to send a confirmatory e-mail about which way the door was to open (which unfortunately was true, but let’s keep in mind that an oral contact is as valid as a written one although harder to prove). In an earlier phone call he had kept insisting that my screen door handle must be screwed on when in fact it had been welded or glued on making it harder to change, and he did not want to agree to change it unless I proved to him that it was not screwed on by sending him a photo of it (how this would prove it I do not know). As by now it was autumn and the weather too bad to be going out on the patio anyway, after discussion, I agreed to wait until I had used the screen for a while come the next spring (that is, in 2015) to see if the tension loosened on its own and I could use it without changing the handle or adjusting the tension.

Once used, however, I found that the screen tension did not loosen, and I continued to struggle. After a couple of phone calls earlier this year (2015) that Jim did not return, we finally communicated via e-mail and he agreed to send someone to change the tension. His men showed up, but it turned out they had no idea how to loosen the screen. After fruitless attempts to get Jim on the phone while his men were there, he finally sent an e-mail informing me that the manufacturer had told him that the screen tension could not be adjusted so there was nothing more he would do for me.

So now I have an expensive door that opens the wrong way, with mini-blinds not the ones I ordered, a screen that is dangerously tight (it thwacks people while closing if you let go of it too soon), and difficulty getting onto my patio. I may need to spend money to replace the whole door and screen assembly, hopefully from a company that values customer service more than GEM does. It's not enough to say "it was all Phil's fault so we fired him so you can't complain about our company." Phil was acting as GEM's agent and representative for years, with their tolerating him, and they did not really do anything useful to correct the situation once he was gone.