Idealcombi UK Avis 86

Very good sales process, very average support during order placing process but totally dreadful after sales service. Specifically in response to damage to windows received clearly incurred at packing stage. Much keener to try and assert that it's not their fault and to shift liability elsewhere than actually rectifying the problem. Total lack of communication once challenged.

idealcombi provided very competitive, thermally efficient and elegant windows for our windswept coastal farm. kept to delivery deadline and all fitted perfectly

My dealings with this company were a pleasure. The situation was fraught - were the windows poor or was it the installation? IdealCombi's man Joe got them working to perfection and my excellent builder Leckhampton Builders in Cheltenham paid for it all.

Recent install for house on the Cornish coast. The quality and design of windows is excellent and the installation team very professional and extremely knowledgeable. From my initial enquiry through to order and installation Idealcombi have been excellent and I would highly recommend the company as does my builder who has rarely seen windows of such quality.

We are renovating a dated 1970s house and had to replace all the windows and doors and add a few. We chose the Nation IC profile for a clean contemporary finish but with a slight detail. They look great and have an elegant feel. We used grey outside and white inside, and chose double glazed as part of an upgrade to the insulated envelope together with upgraded cavity wall insulation and air source heat pump fed under floor heating. This balances fine although we probably could have gone the extra mile for triple glazed as the extra cost was not high. We visited the showroom initially, and it helped that we knew broadly what we wanted, from past experience of renovations. We didn't have an architect or project manager our side but a couple of details needed referring back to our contractor, eg regarding draft measurements and allowances for the fitter. The service we had was excellent and Anna was outstanding in her attention to our changes and details, responding quickly and patiently to infinite queries. The overall cost didn't break our budget and seemed very competitive. Overall, very pleased.

Excellent quality windows with consistent frame widths for a contemporary look. Also, dealing direct with a manufacturer means prices are much lower too... Definitely recommend.

Ordering parts for their windows is a nightmare. They charge for the delivery of small parts like Espagnolettes and Keepers £50.00 per delivery. The reason being: They don't store spares and order them from Denmark as an excuse.
Also, if you are not ordering parts together in the first place, but with some weeks in-between, which can happen in a large company as ours, they are not willing to charge only one delivery charge. They will put them in one parcel and safe the cost on their side though. Qt.: "I am unable to do the orders with one delivery charge, as these orders are several months apart and only one is a recent order" They haven't done anything yet and we haven't received anything yet so they still would be able to credit and invoice all they like, but they don't like!
Also they are not willing to accept card payments, but need bacs payment or cheque which is, again, causing problems in a large finance department as ours, especially since they request upfront payment before they even think about ordering the parts at their end.

Customer service is therefore as terrible as their guarantee handling, reported by somebody else previously.

Ideal Combi windows
Great product and good service from the UK sales office. I had a good experience with this company with my house refurbishment after seeing the product in many new homes around London. the aftersales service was very good and helpful staff ensured my project was completed on time and budget. would recommend for other projects.

Many issues have come up with Ideal combi's windows, which they are claiming are not covered under the warranty. (The property was built 9 years ago and the warranty given by Ideal combi is supposedly for 10 years).
First of all, a lock of the balcony door malfunctioned and the balcony door could not be opened. Furthermore, 2 more windows need to be slammed shut in order to be closed. Other windows are becoming increasingly difficult to close. With such frequent problems I cannot trust Ideal combi's workmanship.

Ideal combi replied and is trying to get out of repairing these defects in the following ways:
1) In their opinion, the warranty is starting from when the windows are DELIVERED! This means, that the warranty started 1 year before the apartment complex was even completed. This is unheard of...
2) Ideal combi is saying that the warranty will not cover for any issues if it was a user error. An engineer came in and assessed the problems and verified that it was not our error, rather than broken mechanisms or frames needing adjustments.
3) Ideal combi is now saying that the warranty will only be valid if the owner is ensuring that yearly maintenance is done. Therefore, the indirectly force you to pay for the ideal combi to come and 'maintain' your windows and frames yearly to be able to keep your warranty! Furthermore, there is no clarification in the warranty of exactly what kind of maintenance they require, therefore Ideal combi can ask for anything they want and they can declare any warranty void!

In general, I would never buy from Ideal combi again. If multiple of my windows developed problems within 9 years, you can imagine that Ideal combi is not a reputable company of good standards.

I’ve had very good aftermarket service from Steve and his team, after moving into a new flat with idealcombi windows and doors. Today Steve just replaced FOC a bit of seal that had gone. Earlier his team fixed a door that had been badly installed at reasonable cost.

The doors and windows are great to live behind. They retain the heat so well I barely use the heating. They are super-solid.

Thanks Steve.

POOR!
I moved in to a new build apartment two and a half years ago and Idealcombi windows and the terrace door were already installed.

The terrace door has always been hard to lock since I moved in.

About two months ago the door was slightly open, when suddenly there was a strong gust of wind which pushed the door wide open.

When I went on to the terrace to see what had happened, I found the hinges on the door had completely snapped and shattered.
The door had completely come away from the frame and could not be closed.

I had to call a Idealcombi approved company who came and put the door back on the frame and locked it and could not be opened any longer.

I have just received the quote to repair the door which comes to over £1500.00.

For such an expensive door it was severely damaged by some wind.

I was told Idealcombi will not accept any responsibility for the damage and it's up to me to pay the full amount.

We had 22 Windows, 2 sets of sliding patio doors and 3 external doors fitted 3 years ago. We continue to unreservedly recommend Ideal-Combi for the quality of their product and the first class service of their friendly team. The product was not only the best we could find after painstaking research into everything on the market, but also the most cost effective.

In this day and age I find it extremely refreshing when I receive the quality of service I recently experienced from Sally Kingham @IdealCombi. From the initial enquiry right through to the quotation stage she responded to each and every email by return. Making my life so much easier when dealing with my clients quotation requests. I’m not one for writing reviews but credit where credit is due! You are a credit to your company and the level of service you provide is very much appreciated.
Many thanks

My family and I have been enjoying our windows and doors for 2 years now. The products are the epitome of Scandinavian design; combining great looks and high quality.

From a customer service perspective, Tom Herring and his colleagues have always been very approachable and helped out with advice.

They have fully backed-up their products and not let me down (e.g. kindly replacing a rubber seal which had started to perish and replacing specialist door handle screws that had been lost).

I have recommended the company to friends and family and was very pleased to note that my neighbour has also opted for Idealcombi for his home extension project.

We were very impressed by the product quality, the hybrid construction of the windows and the energy efficiency. We had a worthwhile trip to the MK showroom before ordering and once ordered the doors and windows were delivered within the quoted timescale.
The independent fitters who were one of those recommended by Idealcombi were very familiar with the product.
Our 1950's house has been transformed

Worst quality ever: our property is a new build, just over 2 years old, and already has 2 windows cracked (most of our neighbours suffer the same issue, 50 properties with issues out of 150).

When complaining about the first cracked window (completion March 2016, window cracked July 2016, window replaced May 2017!), Ideal Combi blamed the blinds installer (utterly nonsense), which to satisfy the client (us), paid £1,500 for the manufacturing, transportation and installation of a single window pane.

Be aware, Ideal Combi is manufactured only in Denmark (no factory in the UK), so that is a big chunk of the final price. Also, because of that, Ideal Combi complies with Danish regulations but NOT with UK regulations.

Finally, Ideal Combi do not know about Health and Safety procedures. When replacing the 1st cracked window (ceiling to floor size), the whole window frame was removed and left our daughter's room completely exposed to a fall from a 2nd floor. The 'engineers' just closed the bedroom door, advised not to enter and left our property for a few hours to work on the replacement window. Shocking!

Last but not least, we reported the second window cracked on 29th March 2018; today is 19th of June, still waiting for an answer on when and how the faulty window is going to be replaced.

My advise: Stay as far as possible of Ideal Combi, utterly shambles.

Tom Evans was a breath of fresh air - enthusiastic, knowledgeable and resolved the problem very quickly. Nothing was too much of a problem and very accommodating and helpful.

The beautifully designed and made windows are a given, but, there is additional praise we would like to heap on the Ideal Combi team.
We had a few problems caused by incorrect fitting by our builders. Ideal Combi sent engineers over 200 miles to undertake a survey of the doors and to replace damaged seals and make other adjustments - at no cost to us and two years after the doors and windows had been fitted.
This represents excellent service and shows that the company values their customers and demonstrates outstanding after-sales performance.

Where to start.... the windows are great, but that's down to the Danish manufacturing. However the UK sales side is an absolute disaster. High turnover of staff, poor training, technical incompetence and no process. We've had months of delays due to Denmark rejecting poor order documents from the UK (every time the UK get it wrong your order goes to the bottom of the pile - 6 to 8 weeks delay).

They failed to cut and paste dimensions sent to them, forgot to send important documents, didn't check the documents before sending out and changed the specification of some windows on the last day without notification! Considering they place themselves at the top end of the market they don't offer the service to match. Oh, and be careful of their pricing.

If you're building your own place I wouldn't recommend this company unless you have the patience of ten saints and a lawyer in the family.

Update: Since my review the UK General Manager has been involved. I went through a long list of issues I'd experienced while trying to get my order through. He listened patiently, was polite and agreed to cover the cost of installing the two replacement windows - wrongly supplied.

He assured me that the number of issues they encounter is low although I do struggle to believe that the chain of events I was put through were random. Hopefully they will take on board my comments and suggestions so that no one else has to struggle to the extent I had to.

I have upped the rating to three stars as the windows really are good and in the end I received what I paid for.

Being in the trade we deal with many window suppliers,
Idealcombi are different to most of the trade as they do not do a supply and fit. Although I tried becoming a registered installer due to previous experience they did not seem interested in the commitment I would give them. They previously recommend a company to the south of Devon who we used before to install there products... We could not use that installer again due to faulty workmanship and endless broken promises to return and rectify issues that were very avoidable!
So you pick Idealcombi what next. ?

You get quote, you get a promise and you then have to chase them to give them money to book a date. You pay and you get a date. The date you are now very dependant on is actually the date they send it over on a ship, not the date it arrives to you. The Date you get will mean within 3-5 days you will get a call from the transport company. When they call and they ask if you want a hiab, you obviously do cause the windows weigh a ton! So the transport company don't have a hiab on the fleet so they sub contract one which takes a few days minimum from this call. Basically you will not get the windows on time and you will find it seriously stressful trying to get commitment and no amount of calling to sort your business out will help.

When the order arrives it will come in chunks so a example is on my last project it came in 3 chunks, no problem you would think but...... thats 3 x's the delivery drama you need in your life. To be fair to the transport company they even admit that they don't know why they are used and can't understand why Idealcombi don't use a company with a hiab on the fleet. They did send on the day they said they would (2 weeks late now), first 2 drops on last project early AM, the third drop at 16.50hrs. If you work on site you understand how this is no help, you lost the entire day and now are paying overtime or staying late to unload a truck - in the rain (probably) and dark!

We reported some damage, nothing has been sorted yet about the repair but I have not chased!! They might come good yet? New would be unreasonable but if repaired we will be delighted!

The Product
Its a very nice product! Great in fact! Solid, sound and tough! Value for money I would say very good. If it was my house and my project it would be a fantastic product and the stress of getting them as a one off to site would be worth it!!! As a contractor its very stressful and I felt I was being made a fool of on every occasion. Fixed contract dates jeopardised for me and unnecessary expenses occurred due to the system they run, it left me very frustrated and angry on more than 5 occasions last year, spending well over 100K with them I expected better!
Getting the sills from there recommended supplier is also a issue! VERY hard! takes almost a month to process from spreadsheet to install! Im still waiting on sills for windows I installed in Oct! (now Jan) And these things are not cheap!!!! Bare that in mind when comparing quotes!!!

The Service
80% of the time the phone is answered but I did get the vibe I was being blocked at times during delivery issues. Sometimes its just a bit slack!
WIll I use again.... Yes
Will I prepare myself for the ride..... YES
Do I like the product..... Yes
Value..... Good

Could they improve.... YES!

Good luck with your purchase and lets hope all the feedback we give them will help them sort out the little bit that makes them nearer to a 2 than a 4 on the points system here!!! GOOD LUCK IDEALCOMBI