Federal Glass & Mirror

I called federal glass for someone to come to our new home to measure for mirrors and made an appointment and took off work from work for the scheduled time and no-​one showed up. After the 5^th time of calling and talking with different individuals and making further appointments with no-​shows again, I gave up. I did call them and told someone I wasn’t sure how they stayed in business with such bad customer service. If I could give ½ a star I would.

Federal Glass installed the mirrors in our bathrooms when our house was completed in 1998. The process went relatively smoothly, and we had no complaints. However, they glued the mirrors to the wall and did not install holding clips.
Twelve years later, one of the mirrors (3.5′ x 5′) spontaneously detached from the wall and came crashing to the floor in a gazillion pieces. Fortunately, nobody was in the bathroom at the time — otherwise someone’s body could’ve been sliced open.
We cleaned up the mess, and then I called Federal Glass to see if they would defray any of the cost of installing a new mirror. I spoke to Mike (I believe one of the owners), and had a most unpleasant conversation.
The gist of it was that Mike treated this as simply a warranty situation, saying that 12 years had passed, so there’s not much he could do for me (he offered a 10% discount — probably less than what I could get with a coupon). I was not claiming that they were legally obligated to do anything. But I was hoping that they’d help me regardless, because it made good business sense to do so.
When you install a large mirror with glue, you had better make sure that it’s not going to fall off without provocation in only 12 years. These guys were the experts. Do you think that homeowners would be satisfied if they’re told «We’re gluing the mirrors to the wall. It’ll last quite awhile, maybe 10 or 20 years or more, but at some point the mirror is liable to fall off.»?
Mike challenged me as to why I hadn’t «inspected» the mirror periodically. I told him that I didn’t know how to inspect a mirror that’s attached to the wall (there were no warning signs at all). He also said that perhaps the mirror had been subjected to unusual conditions like humidity. Well, it’s in a bathroom!
Mike informed me that they still install mirrors using only glue, and that ours was practically a unique occurrence. So I asked him why, if this is such an exceedingly rare event, he couldn’t afford to help us out of this situation. He said he wouldn’t.
I wouldn’t be writing this evaluation if Mike had been polite. Or had not tried to make it seem like our fault for not «inspecting» the mirrors. Or if he had actually apologized, or expressed regret that this happened. Or if he said something like, «Wow, I’d like to send someone over to see what might have gone wrong, so that we can avoid this problem in the future!»
The only thing we did wrong was in being naïve enough to believe that they knew what they were doing by using glue alone.
In summary: maybe we’re just the victims of bad luck (or good luck, since nobody was hurt). And sure, there was no legal obligation for Federal Glass to reimburse us. But they were rude, accusative, dismissive, and didn’t feel like standing behind their installation techniques by spending a few hundred dollars to cover an event that by their own admission happens rarely if ever.
So in my opinion, if you do business with Federal Glass, you had better hope that no unusual situations come up where «customer service» is an issue, at least where Mike is concerned.

Was looking to find a replacement for a shower sweep/​shelf combination since we were getting puddles outside our swing-​open shower door. Home Depot didn’t have anything and recommended these guys. My wife went with our existing sweep/​shelf and returned with a replacement rubber sweep ($ 5) and instructions to simply clean the shelf since it’s still in good shape (just dirty). I easily cleaned and replaced the sweep/​shelf. Now, the puddles are gone! I appreciate that they didn’t try to sell us anything more than what we actually required.