Altho Vicke was very personable we ended up choosing a knob & deadbolt that was not our first choice because she thought the separate handle & deadbolt on 4" centers would be too close. As it turned out our original preference would have worked.
Also, Vicke should have included a Thrubolt Mounting kit for the dummy knob we originally purchased from her. Instead we had to make 3 separate trips to SD Hdwre. We also had to order a working 'Dummy' deadbolt because that was left off the initial order.
In summary, we made unnecessary trips to SDHW(3 total), had the additional expense of our installer making two trips, and had to buy two additional items (kit & deadbolt).
At the very least we should have been 'comped' for the kit & deadbolt -- SO # 53848. Instead we walked away feeling very poorly serviced & taken advantage of.
Tom Murphy
RESPONSE FROM San Diego Hardware Company:
We understand that this was a problematic transaction and we would like to appologize for the difficulties that you encountered. We would, however, like to present our side of the story; Your project was a retrofit, that means that your doors had existing hardware installed in them. Retrofits are always difficult, because we cannot have your doors in front of us to see how many and where the existing holes are located and what size and shape those hole are. And the information supplied by anybody other than a professional installer is always less than 100 reliable. But, most customers dont want to pay an installer to show up at their home (at $50-$75 an hour times a few hours) just to dismantle existing hardware, so that they can identify all components needed for he retrofit, and then reinstall the old hardware while they wait for the new hardware to show up. So, we respectfully go with what our customers tell us and many times retrofits come off without a hitch. On the other hand, there are unique and complicated retrofits that cause many problems, like dummy doors that have cross bores (as yours did, which is very unusual). Really theres only one way to identify all those specifics needed to reorder new hardware, and that is to remove all of the existing hardware so as to expose those subtleties. Again, something that most customers dont want to do.
So, we gather all the information we can from the customer, based on what they observe from looking at the door, hoping they are accurate with their information. And, if theyre not, things can go wrong and parts that may be needed are not ordered, as it was in your case. The reality of calling out a perfect order for a retrofit is like predicting the weather, almost impossible to foresee some of the possible nuances. This is one of the reasons we highly recommend hiring one of our preferred installers to first come to your house and look at the job, it may cost $150 for them to spec out the hardware, but it will save you trips back and forth and ultimately a lot of frustration. We work hard and do the best job we can with the information supplied.
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