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Thursday, March 23, 2006

Kohler Products Suck


I am extremely upset with Kohler. I just installed my 2nd broken Kohler faucet from the Bancroft series.

After seeing the Bancroft suite of Kohler products at my local Lowes, I decided to use it for my bathroom renovation. I don't know if this suite of products is old or new but the Bancroft faucet featured in all the Kohler brochures does not appear to be carried by anyone. I had to special order it from a distributor on the internet who had to special order it from Kohler. Why is Kohler promoting something nobody appears to sell? After installing the faucet, and testing it with water for the first time, I discovered that the hot on/off lever does not actually turn off the water flow. As I turned it on/off I could hear grinding and feel resistance and it had no apparent effect on the water flow. After sending it back and waiting 3 weeks for my second special order to replace the bad faucet, I finally received my 2nd faucet. I tested the on/off level before I installed it, listening for the grinding noise. After not hearing the noise I went ahead and installed the faucet. Guess what? When I tested it with water, the same problem occurred. This time it was the cold on/off lever. I heard the same grinding and once again, it would not shut the water off. In both cases the opposite on/off level worked fine.

In between waiting for the faucet replacement, I decided to install the Kohler Bancroft toilet I purchased at Lowes. When I took it out of the box, I notice the black metal piece attached below the tank did not appear to be attached properly. I could see the slots the metal was suppose to fit into but instead, it had been attached crooked…and permanently so. I decided to give Kohler the benefit of the doubt and installed the tank anyway. Guess what? It leaked all over my new bathroom. I know it wasn’t an installation problem because when I returned it to Lowes and got another tank, I installed it the same way and it didn’t leak. By the way, both tanks came with different parts in the sealed bag…many of these parts are never mentioned in the documentation.

Clearly, Kohler has a major problem with quality control. Its products are among the most expensive in my price range, and yet its quality, from my experiences, is piss poor. I will never buy another Kohler product and I urge you to do the same.

2 Comments:

At 10:34 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

bam! i'm with you brother. just about to head back to lowe's for my third-time's-a-charm attempt at getting a non-defective kohler shower valve kit. if i could only get back the days i spend driving back and forth to the megamarts to return defective crap, i could do a whole extra project.

 
At 12:03 PM, Blogger Craig Rairdin said...

3 trips to Lowe's, a couple hours under the kitchen sink, and the cheap quick-release hose connector leaks. Ironically all my amateur-plumber connections are tight and dry while the "professional" parts from Kohler are failing. Kohler offers to replace if I ship it back so they can examine it, re-engineer it, re-tool the factory, and manufacture me a new one. OR I can have another brand installed by a professional this afternoon and return the Kohler to Lowe's. Hmmm...

 

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