Galvanised Gates. No Galco

...Ghost...

Backstory: I dropped some gates, posts and odd bits into Galco in Walkinstown at the end of March. I had read their preparation advice and made sure every box was ticked before booking in with them. Ingress and egress holes drilled, weld beads ground down and all metal sanded down and cleaned before dropping them off. The guy taking them out of the car checked for the drain holes and all was OK.

I collected the steel a few days later. The forktruck driver asked me to follow him with the car to where my gates were located. I ended up blocking him in, so I took no time to inspect the finish when loading the steel into the boot, but I did notice some areas had no coverage. Rather than ask for them to redo the work, I offered to patch up the areas if the provided some zinc paint. I showed the problem areas to the guy before leaving and he said it was normal for some areas to not get coated, which I found hard to believe, but he said some zinc spray would sort it. I implied I was fine to sort the problem with the spray as I was in a rush for the materials. I paid the bill and left.

The rant: I got home and unloaded the gates. When I took a proper look at them, I couldn't believe how many problem spots there were. There were hardened drips marks, areas with no coverage, lots of dross and 2 of 3 gates had been opened up with a blow torch without my say so. They are supposed to call before altering the steel....but there was no need for these holes because I had already drilled drain holes. I was livid but had to deal with it practically. I took photos and got to work cleaning up their mess. I looked at the invoice that evening for an email address and saw they had charged me for the zinc spray to fix their garbage service. An extra €30 on top. I sent them an email with the photos and tried calling twice a few days later but I figured they were busy and short staff, so I left it a while. I'd have left it if they refunded the cost of the zinc spray.

3 weeks later I rang again and asked if I could speak with someone in charge of quality control to discuss a problem I had with gates I collected. The line went dead and I got no answer after that. I contacted them on facebook with the pictures and they deleted the post within an hour. They did the same today. They obviously don't do customer service and are happy enough to ignore a small customer who might never have gone back anyway. Overall, i'm pretty píssed at their attitude and wanted to share my experience with anyone else who might have considered using them in the future. There are other options out there for galvanising. See some of the pictures I took below.

I chatted with a guy who works for another galvanising place here and he says they most likely skipped the acid bath and dipped it without skimming the bath. Then seeing a bad finish, blew a hole in the steel and dipped it again. I don't know about that, but I know they did a crap job and have failed to even try address it.

One of the holes they put in the gates.


Hardened drips


Have no idea how this passed quality control.


Largest patch uncovered. There were a few of these.


More drips


I know :mad:


I spent a few hours cleaning this mess up and coating the unfinished parts with their rip off zinc spray, but the final finish is not as good as I wanted, even after priming and painting. Would have been nice to leave them without paint, but the finish was awful. I hope this saves 1 person from making the same mistake of dealing with this shower.

...Ghost...

So this morning I got an email from their quality assurance person. Must have seen that I posted the issue in a few places they couldn't delete it. The suggestion was that I could bill them for my time and inconvenience. I figured a hundred euro was fair enough as that's what I spent on materials to try fix the mess. I'll take the hit on my time and wait to see if they honour their word.

seagull

I'd be looking for a chunk back from their bill as well as that, plus compensation for the damage to the gates.

the_pen_turner

get them sandblasted and redone.

SouthWesterly

...Ghost... wrote: »

So this morning I got an email from their quality assurance person. Must have seen that I posted the issue in a few places they couldn't delete it. The suggestion was that I could bill them for my time and inconvenience. I figured a hundred euro was fair enough as that's what I spent on materials to try fix the mess. I'll take the hit on my time and wait to see if they honour their word.

You went to them as they have the expertise to do the job. They didn't do it and damaged your gate. You had to fix the issues and you're happy with a hundred euro.
Are you sure you have a complaint? This post seems to suggest it wasn't a big deal and easily fixed.

I see no real issues with any of that.

The drip runs happen. It’s just the way it goes and all the complaining won’t change that. If you don’t know that it just shows you’ve little experience getting steel hot dipped. Clean them up with a well worn flap wheel on a grinder, easily done.

The tie wire and marks left from those is the same thing. Small brackets need to be tied and your obvious lack of experience gave that result too. A 3mm hole drilled on a corner and pre-wired with a loop they could use for hanging would have spared that result. Snip off your prewired loop with a flush side cutters and it’s job done.

As for your drain holes, they’re misplaced. Fabrication and prep for galv requires experience to prep suitable points for handing and understanding of exactly where the acid wash, rinse and zinc baths will fill, where things will flow inside tube and where things need to vent. Your pictures clearly show you’ve made some nice welds and so on, but they blow vent and drain holes when their experience informs their decision on where to do so to avoid trapping fluids or explosive type expulsion of air into a molten zinc bath. They shouldn’t have burned the holes on one hand but it’s not their fault you didn’t do your prepwork correctly either.

I’ve had piles of stuff done over the years. Like painting, prepwork is essential and you didn’t know enough going into it. Consider it a lesson. I’ve used Galco, the fellas a bit further out near Blanch and a crowd up north. They all slate each other but at the end of the day they do the same thing and dipping is dipping. I’ve had slag on steel dipped at all 3 places, the occasional wiring mark and the only reason I haven’t had the odd hole burned is because I’ve brought a cordless drill and stepped cone to put extra drain holes where the operator asked for them. Learn the lesson and do the same yourself in future.

There’s no consumer issue here, just some ignorance and lack of patience from both parties.

...Ghost...

SouthWesterly wrote: »

You went to them as they have the expertise to do the job. They didn't do it and damaged your gate. You had to fix the issues and you're happy with a hundred euro.
Are you sure you have a complaint? This post seems to suggest it wasn't a big deal and easily fixed.

I had originally planned to just paint the gates, but someone recommended Galco and it made sense for long term protection. I figured I would eventually paint the gates anyway, but for expedience I would have liked to leave the galvanised look for a while.

It wasn't a big deal that I had to clean up after them. It wasn't even a big deal that I had to paint them way sooner than I would have liked to. The part that annoyed me was being charged for the spray paint to fix the spots they missed and then ignoring me when I contacted them about it.

JayZeus wrote: »

I see no real issues with any of that.

The drip runs happen. It’s just the way it goes and all the complaining won’t change that. If you don’t know that it just shows you’ve little experience getting steel hot dipped. Clean them up with a well worn flap wheel on a grinder, easily done.

First time getting anything dipped and it's probably the norm, but I don't think leaving drip marks all over the steel is or should be acceptable.

The tie wire and marks left from those is the same thing. Small brackets need to be tied and your obvious lack of experience gave that result too. A 3mm hole drilled on a corner and pre-wired with a loop they could use for hanging would have spared that result. Snip off your prewired loop with a flush side cutters and it’s job done.

The small holes and ties is a good idea and i'll remember that. As experienced as Galco are supposed to be, they might have made that suggestion when I sent my design drawings and asked for prep advice....something they recommend doing on their website.

As for your drain holes, they’re misplaced. Fabrication and prep for galv requires experience to prep suitable points for handing and understanding of exactly where the acid wash, rinse and zinc baths will fill, where things will flow inside tube and where things need to vent. Your pictures clearly show you’ve made some nice welds and so on, but they blow vent and drain holes when their experience informs their decision on where to do so to avoid trapping fluids or explosive type expulsion of air into a molten zinc bath. They shouldn’t have burned the holes on one hand but it’s not their fault you didn’t do your prepwork correctly either.

The drain holes are both the size and locations Galco asked for. You can't see most of the drain holes in the pictures I attached. Each gate frame had a minimum of 4 holes at 10mm each and was well in excess of what was asked of me. The prep work was done by me and I put holes where they wanted and in other places just to be safe. If I messed up on prep, I would hold my hands up, but I can only follow the advice given. The worker helping me offload double checked everything and said everything looked good. It's also strange that they blew a hole in 2 of 3 frames, even though all the hole placements were matched. Why not the 3rd frame?

I’ve had piles of stuff done over the years. Like painting, prepwork is essential and you didn’t know enough going into it. Consider it a lesson. I’ve used Galco, the fellas a bit further out near Blanch and a crowd up north. They all slate each other but at the end of the day they do the same thing and dipping is dipping. I’ve had slag on steel dipped at all 3 places, the occasional wiring mark and the only reason I haven’t had the odd hole burned is because I’ve brought a cordless drill and stepped cone to put extra drain holes where the operator asked for them. Learn the lesson and do the same yourself in future.

There’s no consumer issue here, just some ignorance and lack of patience from both parties.

I think I knew enough because I did my homework and asked them for specific advice and provided engineering drawings. I actually took my cordless drill and step-bit with me on the off-chance they requested another hole or two in the posts, but everything was OK.

If their techniques are lacking, they should provide advice to mitigate problems caused by this, such as your 3mm hole and tie suggestion. But aside from drips and wire marks, there were large areas with no zinc coverage and a compressed/damaged section the size of a babies hand on the inner part of the frame (3rd image). How can such a low quality finish and ghosting a consumer who brings it to their attention not be a consumer issue?

Their quality assurance officer agreed that the finish was unacceptable. Anyone with eyes couldn't disagree though as you can see in the sample photos. I took the opinion of the lad with galvanising experience with a grain of salt, but I got similar feedback from a galvanising forum I found online which went into a lot more detail and technical jargon I won't repeat here. My mistake was not properly inspecting on collection and not bothering to check the invoice/receipt before driving off.

...Ghost...

Galco eventually got around issuing a cheque, but not until they were a month late and I gave them an extra week or I would revisit the costs and go through the SCC. The cheque was issued the same day as my email. I'm glad it's sorted now though.