ViewrailReviews of viewrail.com

I ordered railing to replace an existing railing in my home last year (2021). I’d like to start with what I liked about Viewrail before sharing how the experienced unraveled. They had excellent customer service out the gate. The inital person I dealt with (Mark Wilson) was super patient in answering all my questions as a DIYer and was understanding when I needed more information at each step of the process. The other thing that went really well was the quality of the product. It’s stunning and I really wish the rest of the experience mirrored the quality of their products and my initial interaction with their customer service. But that is where the positives ended. After I paid, I was transferred to another person (Kimberly Grubb), who quite frankly acted like she was too busy and important to be bothered with my questions. At one point on the phone with her, I had a question about how the slope of the railing was determined because I wanted to make sure I didn’t approve the order without having that clarified as it was slightly off the numbers I gave them. She told me (in a condesending tone) “I don’t know. I’m not an engineer.” I explained that she was my point of contact with the company so perhaps she could ask the engineer who developed my plans. This stage of the process was stressful and I felt uneasy approving the final order but out of pressure from her to approve, I did. I should have trusted my gut and pushed for more time so I could double check everything because it ended up with me having incorrect post sizes (more on that later). Fast forward to the delivery, I ran into several issues. There were a few pieces missing, which they did send out after a few weeks, but even worse the handrails were completely missing. It took a couple weeks to track them down and the box was severly damaged and taped together. Thankfully, the handrails had mostly surface smudges, however, one was gouged. Their solution was to send wood filler, which looks cheap and is really obvious. The board arrived damaged and they should have sent me a new one. My review would have been 4/5 stars at this point, as stuff happens, but the final issue is why I rated them the way I did. 2/3rds of the posts I was sent were 42” (all of the flat posts) when they were supposed to be 36”, which was the measurement I initially provided from the existing railing. After pulling the California building code (where I live) and confirming that they indeed sent me the height for a gaurdrail and not a handrail (which all of these were the latter), I alerted my new contact (Wynton Edwards…yes, a third person) and all he did was argue with me an give me the run around. He actually sent me screenshots of guardrail and handrail information from a commercial safety product company based in Wisconsin as his backup that 42” was correct, while I was sending him direct language from the California building code CRC 312.1.2, which states "Where the top of the guard serves as a handrail on the open sides of the stairs, the top of the guard shall not be less than 34 inches and not more than 38 inches." It is not supposed to be more than 38” because the rail is serving as a handrail. They were only referencing one part of the code (about guardrails) and ignoring the part that pertained specifically to my project. I eventually gave up because they wouldn’t offer anything except a discount on a reorder, even though they sent me the wrong size flat posts and not what I had requested in my initial communication. It was approximately $6.5K project, which is a substantial amount of money for me, and I felt that once they had my money they didn’t care whether or not I was a happy customer and that my order was correct. I would not recommend this company to anyone and have discouraged family and friends who were considering using them.

While the product itself is well made, the company does not seem to be able to resolve issues in a reasonable manner. The biggest issue is that we received an incorrectly made post which did not become clear until we tried to put in the rails. This area protects from the floor below and with young children is a safety issue. Despite my concern and multiple attempts, the company is only able to send a replacement at regular production time and then can "rush shipping". There seemed to be no concern or apology about the mistake and no offer to give a refund or send an additional product at lower cost that was an error on our end. I asked for a supervisor, but I kept hearing I "talked to the supervisor" and "nothing could be done". After reviewing our order further- I realized that there was also an issue on the initial product order end. I had checked on the order 1 month after order and was told it was "right on time". However it seems as if the order was missed and only started production after I checked in on it, again with no apology and no offer to correct the issue when I discussed with customer service with the other issue. Unfortunately we don't have any solution to prevent falls to the floor below while we wait the 11 business days for the post to ship and were not offered any other solution.

Hand rails and cable reels were missing from the original shipment. The packing list was a joke...so poorly laid out that it was impossible to determine exactly what was packed inside of which box. Parts numbers did not match the original list. I was sent black sheet screws for my project that needed silver stainless steel. To save money and fit within my budget, they made design changes that I would not have accepted if I worked with the products regularly. there were no special instructions that came with these revisions, so following the included instructions made us run out of parts that were not to have been used with the replaced posts.

The quality of manufacture is good but the design is cumbersome and requires far too much time to install.

Powder coating failed on some of the posts as well as the mounting brackets on top of the posts broke causing the railing to become loose. Exterior install. Midwest climate.

I have never put a set of floating stairs in a house before but I have built over 400 homes. It was a SUPER frustrating experience. For the most part every person I talked to was nice but the process was awful. I would suggest you send someone on site to measure the steps. Taking pictures and filling out forms are very tough.

Their products are very nice and overall they should cost you less, but our first experience is that they designed in and delivered an incorrect post (one for cable instead of rod) which cost us a significant amount of time and money to replace as it had a rubber roof installed over it. The rubber had to be removed, the wrong post uninstalled, the new post reinstalled and the rubber repaired. It was easily a >1k overall mistake that we had to eat. When we identified that we had the wrong post they did send over the correct one without much hassle which is the reason for the 2nd star.

The banister looks nice but the manufacturing tolerances are poor. One of the 6 posts for our stairwell was manufactured incorrectly. They were not interested in making us a new one. They actually suggested I contact a local metal manufacturer and pay to have it corrected. We were able to turn the post and they shipped a new bracket for the handrail but the installation is not symmetrical now. We asked to buy a new post but they said we would be at the back of the manufacturing schedule. To top it off the installation bolts and covers for the bolt holes that are included in the slim post purchase we're not shipped....and we had to pay shipping to get them. Now that we're all done some of the cable hole covers will not set into the holes. I've had to carefully file the rim down to get them to fit. Overall a nice product but for the cost I expected so much more. I won't use them again or recommend them.