Centex Gutters

All talk.
I really hate writing negative reviews of small businesses. They have too much at stake and I don’t want to assume my bad experience represents all. But in some cases I feel a duty to warn other people against being taken advantage of and this is one of those cases.
There are just too many signs that Don’s business model is to take advantage of people by cutting corners first and apologizing later. Gutters are ripe for this kind of thing because the great majority of people aren’t going to get up on a ladder to check things out or even know what to look for. But I have learned what to look for and I was there when Don and his crew came to install.
So this is how it works with Centex: Don is very good at selling the idea of high quality work. He’ll stress this by disparaging the workmanship of other places and show you pieces of metal he uses as if they hold some special value. Since he charges more, and because every one in town gets their materials from the same place, the only reason to go with one place over another is your faith in their quality of work. I was dumb enough to be seduced by Don’s promises.
When it came time for the install, however, it was very clear that the real priority for them was to get in and out as fast as possible. When I called attention to some glaring mistakes (screws clinging to mid air instead of my joists, downspouts cut too short) they apologized and told me it would be fixed. But then it wasn’t fixed and they made new promises. Still: a 3^rd time they told me all was done only for me to look out an easily see they’d only corrected a few things, hoping, I guess, that I wouldn’t actually walk around the whole house.
Finally the super obvious stuff was corrected and it was time for the final walk through. But this is where Don really showed his hand. He almost couldn’t walk fast enough past everything and his crew was well into packing up… It was clear he didn’t want me to have time to actually look closely at anything. When I asked if he had run water through the gutters to check for leaks — a quality control he made a point of touting during the sales pitch — this pissed him off and he tried to act offended that I would question his work. After some calming down he agreed to do this pretty standard test.
But what I learned only after he left is that he ended up pulling a fast one on this part as well: The only way to test a gutter with a hose is to get up on a ladder and point the full flow of the the hose into the gutter to simulate the amount of water you’d be getting off the roof from actual rain. If he had done this (as I did later) he would have found several joints that leaked and that one whole stretch that was pitched incorrectly so it failed to drain water. Instead what Don did was to stand on the driveway and spray water up into the air in a little sprinkle until some dribbled down one of the downspouts. Totally bogus, but it’s a good way of pretending to perform a test if you want to avoid exposing further issues.
I had time to do the test myself a day later:
— 2 out of 3 corner joints leaked (Don says these «special» pre-​fab corner pieces prevent leaks. In fact, they’re just faster to install. The crew doesn’t have to measure and miter corner joints).
— 2 out of 5 downspouts leaked
— 1 full stretch of gutter was not pitched toward a downspout and instead held ¾″ of water. (Things were worse when it actually rained. This stretch over-​flowed)
I told Don about these problems and he offered to come back out. Had this been 1 or 2 honest mistakes that would make sense and and I wouldn’t be writing this. But the problems did not seem honest. Over and over they seemed like the result of a crew that was rushing and sloppy. In short, I didn’t want to make the same mistake twice.
I opted to take my lumps and hire someone else to fix what could be fixed.

We found Centex Gutters through a neighbor and contacted and spoke to Don (the Owner) who came the next day for a free estimate. He walked the house with me and explained each step of the new seamless gutter install. He showed me downspout brackets that no one else uses and a different piece for the corner of the gutter that Centex Gutters only use to avoid leaks. The quote was more than fair and the best part was they installed the gutters within 3 days. They showed up on time took there time cleaned up. Did a walk through with me ran water to test and verify the gutters with me. I am just now getting calls back from the other so called gutter companies 3 weeks after CenTex completed my install. I also had them do a small repair on one of my other properties and gutter cleaning as well. Beyond happy with Centex Gutters. % stars isn’t enough in my book customer for life.