I would like to share with you my experience in dealing with Castle: The Window People. The registered name of the company is Cardo Windows Inc., located in Mt. Laurel, NJ 08054.

We are a family of two pre-retirement people. We are the owners of a small townhouse in Central NJ. I would say happy owners, and like any owners, we are carefully planning our home repairing projects.

Last summer we decided to install new windows in our townhouse. After careful consideration, we invited to our home the sales person from the abovementioned Company.

The sales person stayed in our home for three hours educating us and trying to persuade us that Castle windows are the best window we can get for our money. By the way, we have only five windows to replace and I think it was not really a big order for the Company.

We got an unforgettable performance from Mr. Salesperson. For example, he hid under our dinner table to calculate the price. We still did not understand completely how our price was compiled, as the Company promised in their commercials $75 per window = $ 375.00 for five windows. Our price was far above those. However, we were exhausted after such an extensive marketing event and we did not argue.

The sales person kept telling that it is no pressure at all. It is completely up to us to place the order or not to place the order, but refused to leave without a $1200 deposit. We asked him to give us a time to think he was implacable. He also told us that we have to wait two months. We did not worry too much this time lag as we were visited on September 4 and we were hoping to get our windows by November 4. We were literally forced to sign a contract, which stated that we have only the next three days to cancel it.

I want to be completely honest: we really liked the windows Mr. Salesperson demonstrated. He also gave us insight into industry pitfalls and we were hoping that even if he was not very ethical, we would still get a pretty good windows and a good tax rebate. Mr. Salesperson also persuaded us that his company would take care about the permission we have to obtain from our townhouse association.

Guess what? In the beginning of November, we received a call from Castle saying that they are ready to install our windows, but they did not have permission from our Association. They told us that our windows are on Production HOLD. When I questioned them why they did not tell us about this two month earlier, I did not receive any intelligible answer or any apology either. I did not receive any explanation for the meaning of Production HOLD. It took us a couple of weeks to obtain the required permission, and when I called to schedule a day for installation, they told me that they just received the permission and now they would start making our windows.

On December 15, after the Company had rescheduled our appointment twice, I was looking with deep desperation through my old windows at the road: they still had not come. The temperature outside is 29 and it is very windy, it is getting close to sunset nobody has called with an explanation.

I do not have a choice but to call and ask if anybody is going to come to install our long-awaited windows. A customer service representative told me that she has to call me back. When she did so she said that the person who was supposed to install our windows had a big problem in another house and he will be arriving at 3 PM. When we asked her will the person has enough time to do his job she told us that it will take only three hours to install five windows. Another big lie!.

When finally only one worker showed up at our home, it was 3:30 PM and he informed us that there was no way he could start and finish all five windows before midnight.

I immediately called and had a very unpleasant conversation with the one of the owners of the Company, who refused to cancel the entire order or to give us any rebate for moral damage.

Now, when I am writing these lines, it is completely dark outside, 5:35 PM Eastern Time, December 15 and he has not finished yet.

The people from Castle customer service have enormous room for improvement. They are aggressive and impolite. They are also liars, as most information I was getting from the Companys representatives was far from the truth.

What can I add? I have a good understanding that it is a difficult time and every company is trying to keep their costs low. Castle probably needs more employees to meet their customers needs, but it will cost them more money. The Company is probably balancing between lowering their costs and customer satisfaction. The latter is suffering significantly. I am a very unsatisfied customer and I am afraid I will remain this way, if and when this job is ever completed. I do not trust this Company at all. I do not trust their guarantee--the one their salesperson talked about for an hour and a half. I will recommend this Company neither to my friends, nor to my enemies.

Our windows were finally installed: One on December 15 and the other four on December 18. By this time we had found out that Castle not manufacturing the windows at all, but buying them from Soft-Lite Windows, an independent company in Ohio.

I will be surprised by how long Castle stays in business if they building all their business on lies.