Michael from Caledon

Here’s our (very detailed) story about our personal experience buying a door from Nordik. It’s very long and very detailed, so feel free to skip to the rating if you’d rather not read it all. Our order was placed March 29th, 2021 We were told by our sales person who came to our home, Peter., that the timeline would be 20 weeks from the time we sign, 22 at the most. We were surprised by this, but Peter mentioned that he was honest and this was the timeline. Anyone at other companies who says it would be quicker, wouldn’t be truthful. Still difficult to digest, we knew our delivery date would be August 16th, and that the worst-case scenario would be August 30th. Our deposit was taken prior to Peter leaving our home on March 29th. We found out that product isn’t ordered or sent to be manufactured until the professional measurer (2nd measure) comes in to confirm the measurement that the sales rep took. This took place on April 28th. Worth noting here that this is a month after we gave our deposit. On May 16th, I sent our sales rep, Peter, an email saying that I knew we were still quite far from the ETA, however I thought I would check in to see if everything is still on schedule or if anything has changed. I didn’t receive a reply here. On June 26th, I sent another email to Peter asking the same thing; “I didn’t hear back from you Pete. Is everything on schedule?” No reply from Peter. On July 2nd, my wife called the Nordik office to try her luck. She was told by the receptionist, that yes, they see our order and the ETA is the mid/late October. We asked for an escalation path and were told that there was no manager in the office that day, however we could email him, and the receptionist provided a generic email address. Later the same day, I forwarded my original communications to this email address, and advised that we were being ignored by our sales rep, and the receptionist very casually extended our ETA by 2 months, and I also mentioned that we were getting concerned with our deposit given everything going on. I didn’t receive a reply to this email either. On Tuesday, July 12th, I called Nordik and asked to speak with Peter. I was told I would have to call him directly as sales reps don’t work in the office. I advised that I had tried to contact Peter a number of times but hadn’t heard back. Would there be a manager that I could speak with? I was again told that there was no manager in the office that day. I was put on hold while they tried to find someone for me. After only a minute or so, they came back on the line and said they knew who I was (even though I hadn’t given them my name or my order number), and that our ETA was mid/late October, but we would be getting a call soon to arrange for our 2nd and final measure. I explained that we had already had our 2nd and final measure at the end of April, and that I have challenges with this because it’s not what we agreed to, not to mention the fact that we can’t even get our salesperson to answer us. She advised that she would contact Peter for us, and ask him to call us. This was the morning of July 12th. Late in the evening of July 14th, I received a call from Peter. He immediately mentioned that he would have to apologize because my name was on a long list of people he had to call today, and would I mind telling him the reason I wanted him to call me. I described our discussion with their receptionist and how we were very casually told that our ETA had increased by 2 months, which couldn’t be possible because this was longer than the worst-case scenario that we were told about before we signed our contract. Peter explained that yes, the ETA was October 18th (29 weeks instead of the worst-case 22 weeks), and that yes, there have been production delays, constraints, shortages, and that he also had to wait when he ordered his personal door through Nordik, and that he was sorry but there was nothing that he could do. They’re now telling customers that the wait time will be longer when they receive new orders. He added that I should thank him as the price of our door went up by $900 after the second measuring, and Nordik covered that for us. I asked why it took so long to get an answer from someone. He apologized that sometimes it takes him a day or so to get back to people because he’s so busy. I advised that I sent him emails over the last couple of months. He didn’t seem surprised, but said that he does get behind sometimes, and that he gets 200 emails each day. He checked and did notice that I sent him one in June, to which I replied that the first one I sent him was in May. He admitted that sometimes he does, unfortunately, skip some emails as some customers follow up with him shortly after the orders are placed, and that there’s nothing he can do so there’s no reason for him to answer. I didn’t appreciate that and told him that when our ETA goes up by 2 months and our salesperson (who said to reach out to him anytime when we were signing the papers), doesn’t reply, and neither does the manager, we get nervous about our money, and start thinking we’re in business with the wrong company. I told him that this had certainly tainted our experience here and we were unhappy and frustrated because I knew that there was nothing that would be done. He replied with he was sorry and hoped that we will at least be happy with our new door when it’s installed on October 18th. I asked who to speak with if I had questions going forward, Peter said to call the Installation Department directly for updates, and not him. I said thank you and we ended the call. Jump ahead to September 28th at around 4PM which is the next communication I receive. A call comes in from an unknown person, who is polite, advising that my door is ready and would like to schedule an installation time. I ask for the first available time which is tomorrow, September 29th in the afternoon. Yes, we'll make ourselves available for this. On the morning of September 29th at 7:50AM, I receive a call from the installer telling me that they were double booked for the afternoon, but coincidentally the other person cancelled, and could they come in the morning instead. We said yes, and again, altered our schedules. At this point, we would have done anything to get it done. Two young guys showed up about an hour later and got to work. They did a nice job removing the old door, installing the new one, and cleaning up after themselves. The door was the one we picked, and looked as good as we had hoped it would look. I would say that the entire installation took about 4 hours, or a little less. As the guys were leaving, they asked if we had a balance owing, which we did as we had only made a deposit when we placed the order. He told me we had to pay the balance today, and that credit cards weren't accepted to pay the balance "as stated in the contract". He was right, however we signed that over 6 months earlier and a reminder would have been appreciated so we would have been more prepared. He said that we could set up Nordik as a bill payment with our bank, which we did, and paid the balance in full before they left. We provided the confirmation number of the bill payment. On September 30th, I received a call from a new person at Nordik, again very polite, advising they had heard that we wanted to pay our outstanding balance with an E-transfer, and when would we want to do that? I advised that we had already paid by online bill payment, and again shared the online confirmation number with this new person. Nordik wasn't the cheapest option, however they are a Canadian company, which we love going with and always try to do when we can. We felt going with someone local would also give us the opportunity to do business with a local contact instead of a generic customer service number. We're not frustrated with the product shortages, or anything like that; what bothers us is the service and how we were treated, and how still, nobody cares. There were times where we couldn't even track down the person who came into our home to sell us the door, and we thought at one point that we would never see our door or our deposit again because every person we tried to get in touch with ignored us. We live in a good-sized home with 20 or so windows, including several large windows, 2 floor-to-ceiling windows, skylights, several exterior doors, and multiple sliding glass doors and French doors. Based on our experience with Nordik, it's not worth the trouble to go with them again. We felt like they took our deposit, then moved on to the next person. I don't accept that product shortages are excuses for poor service. If they feel like they’re doing me a service by selling me their product, that’s not the kind of company I want to do business with again. After all of this, I get an automatic email from Nordik saying "How Did We Do? Please Review Us". Ok sure, here it is.