5 Star Windows & Conservatories

I am not usually someone to leave a descriptive review but If I receive good service I will usually complete a feedback questionnaire acknowledging this and if I receive bad service I will ignore and move on. However, having had such a bad experience recently, I have taken the time to write this to advise anyone that they need to think very carefully before ordering anything from 5 Star Windows/Construction and avoid if at all possible. I was a little apprehensive about ordering new windows when we moved into our new house because the double glazing market is renowned for “cowboy” operators and unfortunately we stumbled across the company that proves this label valid! We obtained a number of quotes for new windows for the front of our recently moved into house, which is situated on a main road, and were convinced by the 5-Star salesmen that their acoustic windows were the right solution as to quote him “you simply will not achieve the same sound proofing with triple glazing as this was created for enhanced thermal performance and not sound deadening. It is universally acknowledged within the industry that double – glazing with acoustic glass is the best way to go to achieve sound proofing results”. You would think that having made this statement that 5-Star would be pretty keen to ensure that the windows they supplied did provide some sound benefit when installed but this is in fact not the case! After enduring a supply process which lasted almost a year to replace two main front windows involving glass panes not turning up, panes being completely scratched, the wrong specification panes, frames covered in scratches, damage to the rendering of the house (which was not repaired), we had had enough! The windows 5-star supplied, did not provide any better sound protection than the other windows within the property which had been in place for over 25 years! Did 5-Star care? No! They would did not even come out to the property to properly test what sound protection the windows offered. They simply relied upon the fact that they had an invoice from their subcontract glass supplier which labelled the glass as acoustic. It did not matter whether it worked or not! Naively, and it is one of the reasons or me writing this review in the hope that it protects others, we thought that we could take this to arbitration and any sane person would agree that if you buy windows sold as “acoustic windows” then they should provide a sound benefit. Surely an arbitrator would recognise this and order 5-Star to supply something which does provide a sound benefit. Unfortunately the arbitrator opted out of holding 5-Star to account for product quality and instead made a decision that 5-star had contracted to supply a window called an “acoustic” window and the paperwork showed that they had. The performance quality of the window did not matter! Therefore the moral of the story for anyone reading this review is – Don’t bother using 5-Star as whatever they tell you a product might do is irrelevant because once they have supplied something they couldn’t care less how it performs! We have had to learn the hard way, hopefully reading this review you won’t have to!