North Shore Door

This review is more about Milgard windows (bought through this rep), however, North shore doors who sold us these windows were slow to communicate and ultimately we needed to resolve warranty issues ourself.

Very poor quality control on fiberglass ultra windows. We are doing a full reno of a west coast modern house (Vancouver Canada) - replaced around 40 windows with fiberglass ultra (supposed to be their highest quality window). Total cost was around $130,000 (we have many floor to ceiling, max size windows). Also replaced 4 large sliding doors with ultra fiberglass, at around $10,000 per door. Of the 40 windows (bought in three phases), 5 needed to be fully replaced under warranty because they would not open/close correctly due to warped fiberglass frame or came with scratched glass (this was confirmed by the warranty tech). Worst part of all of this - same experience as others in this thread - Milgard has a lifetime warranty but timeline for warranty repairs are literally YEARS. It took around 12 months to get our warranty issues resolved EVERY time we had a new phase of windows installed. We deeply regret being suckered by the promise of a lifetime warranty. From our experience their business model is to shorten their lead times (relative to their competition) by compromising on quality, and then deal with the issues on site through their warranty. To give them credit, they DID fix all the issues, now 3 YEARS later after the first windows were installed. Overall the quality of the fiberglass ultra is mediocre (poorly mitered seams, chipped fiberglass). Will never use Milgard again. Do yourself a favor and save a couple years of dealing with Milgard warranty claims. Also note that for western Canada, milgard laid off all their warranty staff, and they now contact out repairs (AJ Glass in North Vancouver) - the fact that they have a single guy doing all the repairs says a lot about how they intend to support their warranty. As a result, AJ Glass cannot possibly service all the warranty claims in a reasonable amount of time.

If you do decide to go with North Shore Door and Milgard, I suggest you ask them to explain why they would recommend a product with such a bad warranty reputation and quality control. Our experience over the last three years tells me this is unlikely to change any time soon. Also know that despite North Shore Doors claims that they will help (they do try) but they are just a rep and have no sway to help resolve any of your warranty issues.