Keystone MAXX Reviews

We found a video which helped but contradicted the paper instructions so was not sure which to try and follow. After contacting Maax they said they sent us the wrong instructions and that is why there were parts missing and why we had parts we didn't need. They agreed to send the missing parts and emailed me the instructions. They told me to just toss the extra parts we didn't need. After reading the new instruction I realized I would have to take the walls apart as the two instructions were different and we installed things that were not required as we followed the instructions for the Halo not the Halo Pro. I also had to move both wall jambs back 1.5 " which now means I have 10 large screw holes and anchors in my brand new tiled walls.

When I called Maax back she was very snotty and said, "You already called us and we sent the parts." I asked if they would be providing any compensation as I will have fix all this and it will be costly and she asked me what I meant and then she said no they don't do that. I said, "Should I call back to the store that ordered it from" and she said, "No. You already got the parts you need and they will come in time." So now I am left with a half installed shower, waiting on parts and a decision on if I rip out the new tile walls or try and plug them all. After looking for online videos for install help, I have found many complaints from people and wish I read them before I purchased.

For a company that's been around for 50 years you would think they would be more willing to fix their mistakes and help make things right when clearly this was their screw up. The lady on the phone knew exactly what the problem was as soon as she punched in my serial number and she said this has happened many times and to please just listen to her while she tells me what I need to do. I asked why they don't fix the problem and make better instruction for people to follow and she had no response. I so wish I would have bought a different shower. :(

While my 3-year-old granddaughter was exiting the shower, the heavy glass door came off the rail as she held it for support. Thankfully, her injury was minor, but this could have been far worse. Upon inspection, I found that the plastic safety pegs had deteriorated to the point of being completely ineffective. This is a critical design flaw. A key safety component like this should never be made of a material as prone to wear as plastic. I urge Maax to address this issue immediately to prevent potential harm to others. I would appreciate it if the company could contact me to discuss this matter further.

Now the cheap, cheesy, thin plastic bracket that holds the top of the slide bar snapped off the shower wall. I reverse engineered this and made a 75% solid ABS one and 3d printed it. It is strong enough to be run over by a TRUCK instead of the Maax one that breaks if you sneeze on it. That is going in this week and next I am going to 3D print new handles because the round ones are impossible to grip when your hands are wet and or soapy, genius design for SHOWER handles!! I would rip the whole thing out but it is built in and I have other major powder room, en-suite and kitchen renovations underway. Rest assured that in my homes and my reno business, I will NEVER use or install any MAAX junk. It is poorly conceived and horrifically supported. Once you buy it they are customer hostile. Engineering experience and a modern machine shop will be needed to keep their stuff operational after you redesign it and rebrand it as your own.

I tried to find out from Maax where the cartridges are made so we could try and see if there would be any in their position but we were ignored. Are they saying to me that we should replace a 12,000. shower because of a cartridge. I even wrote to your CEO but he did not have the common decency of a reply. I should also state that we have the huge bath tub and other Maax products in our home. What a mistake to purchase from a company that does not treat their customer with any respect so we are with a beautiful shower that does not work. Anyone out there with even a rebuild cartridge I would be happy to purchase.

Problem #2: While installing the 60" MAAX Reveal shower door, one of the essential parts sent in the box (threshold bar) was for a 48" shower door. This obviously haulted construction on my shower project.

Problem #3: I contacted customer service, but they only work M-F 8am-5pm EST. So further delay occurs. When I was able to contact them on Monday morning, they inform me they need pictures of my receipt and pictures of the part with a tape measure. I complied and sent the email with pictures attached and also asked them to contact me regarding this because I would like overnight shipping so I could continue with my project without further major delays. I don't feel like this is an unreasonable request because after all, this error was completely because of company packaging and/or quality control or lack thereof and ownership of the error should be accepted by the company.

I did not hear back from them on Tuesday, so on Wednesday, I called their customer service again. They said they had not received my request, but said they would check their "blocked email queue" to see if it was in there. It was! So another day lost because of their company IT department incompetence. Surely at this point they would see how they continue to cause delays for me and would want to speed things up...NOPE! In fact, I was told they don't have a policy for that. They also told me they don't have a policy for expedited shipping. All we get is regular 5-7 business day shipping because that is all they offer per their policy. They also told me I should feel lucky that the part I needed was in stock because many other customers are waiting on backordered parts and will not be getting them for another 2-3 months.

I would like them to know that I do not feel lucky at all. Actually, I feel inconvenienced and taken advantage of. I paid a lot of money for a product with terrible customer service during installation. If their bar is this low, I can only imagine how they will treat me if there is an issue with their product after installation. They need to spend more time making policies to take care of their customers such as a policy for quality control of their product, a policy for higher manufacturing standards, and a policy for quickly shipping parts that were incorrectly packaged.

OVERALL REVIEW: Great looking product if were as easy as it looks in the videos and brochures. However, the truth is there are manufacturing errors with hole locations, so things don't fit together like they should. They have major quality control issues and their number one problem is CUSTOMER SERVICE. For a product with this expense, they need to do better. If customer service is important to you, then I would say to go with a different product.

Refused to even acknowledge how difficult the install is (one of us is a contractor who has done many shower doors and this left us absolutely flummoxed). Avoid this company at all costs. The fact that they didn't even apologize or offer something in return for the cost of my having to get a contractor out a second time to fix their mistake is just icing on the cake of this awful company.

Original Review: Oct. 16, 2022

In today's online world one comes to expect, with a lower price may come lower quality. In fact one might come to expect to fiddle- faddle with a product from overseas. Buy local, they say. There was a time, sadly I fear has passed when Maax was synonymous with quality. Their pricing was always indicative of same. How times have changed. Granted, the market for a 48” wide by 34” deep shower stall is limited so I felt confident in my choice of supplier - MAAX. The support installation video and downloadable instructions certainly had my hopes up that this would be a project that would be relatively smooth sailing.

We ordered this unit through Home Depot and it was delivered to our home. Its final destination would be the cottage and wouldn’t be undertaken until the season was over - which is now, this fall. The shine fell off the brass ball when upon opening I noticed a 1/4” chip on the front apron of the base. Ok, well not great, but I will live with that. I built my enclosure area as per the instructions (which as I said were very concise). No issues. I placed my base in, and fastened after ensuring all was level and square. I then placed the the rear upper part of the enclosure onto the base previously applying silicone as directed (note- that video and instructions did not include is that it is better to lightly sand areas to be siliconed for best adhesion). I also found that after marking the base with a pencil in order to give me a reference for applying the silicone really didn’t help (as I found out when I disassembled the back and base pieces from each other).

The “patented alignment pins” that I was impressed with aligning the back and the base fell well short of the mark when it came time to attach the first of the two side panels. Terrible doesn't describe the poor workmanship I found. The panels were so wonky (so much for their claims of wood reinforcement) that I had to mark off and redrill the holes in order to get them to line up. Even then, the fits was poor.

I am going to (next weekend) rip some 3/4 ext grade plywood into backer strips and glue and clamp with PL Premium to the backside of the panels giving me a new surface into which I can create new holes for the pins to go into. This should be part of the design from the get go. Wow! As it is, this 1/8” strip of fiberglass with a gel coat finish offers up a hole oftentimes less than 1/8” from the edge. It goes with out saying that with numerous fitting attempts this broke. Sigh! Anyway, I’m going to call Maax tomorrow, Monday, as there wasn’t anyone there today. I’m also going to give Home Depot a shout. I paid over $1400 for this junk that I will have to make work (and I will) but I sincerely hope one of these companies or perhaps both look after my issue in one form or another. Shame on you MAAX!

Now in July of 2022 the same area has 3 problem sites (one hole the size of a BB, a cracked spot and another site where the finish is wearing off). Maax states the warranty ended in 2021 and the repair work warranty was only for 1 year. This is obviously a defect in the product itself, a bathtub should not develop holes after 3 years of use and now more holes after 6 years of use. I reported the problem while under warranty and the “patch” fixed it enough to get through the warranty but a bathtub should last well over 5 or 6 years.

I have spoken to a service rep 4 times and am waiting for a call from a supervisor and the representative would only give me a first name for the supervisor and said there is no extension for the supervisor. I am hopeful that maax will assist with this issue. I have seen that others have had problems with cracks and holes in their units as well and feel that the problem was not fully investigated initially. No one removed the drain at the time of the initial repair to look for defects or further damage, the holes are all at the area around the drain. The serial number for the tub unit is 00006170788 if this helps.

To get the base and top piece to look remotely correct, we wound up having the top be out from the wall about an inch. We had to shim it up to make it work. Now I have to add extra layers to make my back wall in my bathroom thicker to help fill the gap. We're wondering if we got factory seconds. This crap is ridiculous. From now on, we're just gonna stick with one piece showers. It would have been easier to make a hole through our wall and put a one piece than install this 4 piece shower. It took us hours, about 7 or 8 just to get it to look halfway decent. NEVER AGAIN!!!!

Here’s the punchline: The project turned out to be NOT fast, NOT easy, and NOT particularly low cost, though we probably did complete at about 25% lower product cost than a traditional tile shower installation. There was no savings on time - we likely spent more time than on a traditional shower install. We would NOT recommend this product except in very specific circumstances. Our experience with a MAAX UTile installation was quite frustrating, though we eventually completed the project, but we are not confident in long-term performance of the system. Now, our story and the gory details:

DELIVERY AND QUALITY

Product delivery was difficult. We ordered through Menards, with a 6 week delivery promise. The order was delayed by an additional 6 weeks (to 12 weeks). The Menards team helped, providing an in-stock, same model shower base ahead of the delivery, to keep our overall basement renovation job moving. When the order did arrive, a wall was missing (a MAAX delivery error). Menards worked diligently to expedite the missing piece. When the last wall arrived (an additional 2+ weeks delay), we discovered one wall had a surface crack and each wall had some cosmetic defect. MAAX tech support offered good support in this moment: they quickly shipped a replacement for the cracked wall (we worked around the other cosmetic issues). Quickly = add another week of delay. Total delivery time: 15 weeks.

Unfortunately, quality was challenging beyond the walls. The Olympia model base is built by gluing a molded plastic floor to a styrofoam under-layer. The system SQUEAKED when stepped on. We had to evaluate if this was caused by a non-level floor issue (no), related to movement before the system was permanently secured (no), or something else. We determined the problem was between the surface and styrofoam layers, where the two surfaces rubbed together. The layers were not glued together well, or may just be a bad design: weight on the base’s surface creates friction between the layers which creates squeaking. With some research, we resolved this by pouring real talcum powder in the poorly glued gap between the layers, completely around the base edge - no more squeaking! We hope this will be a lasting fix.

INSTALLATION

MAAX indicates that the uTile system should be installed within an effectively perfect space - level and plumb in all (specific) dimensions except floor-to-ceiling height. Two “buts”: the instructions are not perfectly clear on how the pieces must install relative to the space, and the actual product quality does not match the demand for space construction quality. This created a cascade of problems for us.

Shower base location - We placed the shower base prior to the walls arriving, including setting the drain pipe location. We followed the specific instructions for a uTile installation (which are different to the shower base’s standard instructions). These say, absolutely, “Install the base pushing it completely against the studs” (page 7, step 2). NOT true, as we only found out later, after the plumbing was set. Setting the back of the shower base completely against the studs creates a later problem with alignment of the uTile shower walls with the front edge of the shower base.

We were completely screwed on this one, since we installed before testing fitting everything (due to delivery delays). We ended up with about a 1/4” overhang of wall beyond the edge of the shower pan. It doesn’t look terrible, but it is not right. You WILL need to shim the shower pan off the back wall by about 1/4” to get perfect alignment on the front edges. This is a significant error in the install instructions.

Installing the walls - As we placed the walls, in our nearly-perfect opening, we encountered odd panel alignment issues. We noted different-sized gaps on the back wall between the top and bottom of both the right and left sides of the wall; in testing fitting all the wall panels, this created an exaggerated gap in both corners where wall panels met, and seemed to pull the front edge of the side walls away from the studs. We checked our level and plumb on all walls, they were good.

We determined the back wall was slightly warped in the middle, by about 1/4”, from the center to the bottom of the wall. With no way to attach the center and bottom of the wall to the studs behind, we resolved this, as best we could, by attaching the back wall to the side studs about 6” from the bottom of the studs on both sides of the panel - an action definitely not in the instructions, which do not call for any screws-to-studs on the sides of the back wall. This resolved the warping problem enough that the corner gaps mostly closed up, and the side walls mostly squared up and touching their framing studs. We proceeding to “permanently” install the walls, and sealed up the corners.

Installing the corner shelves - This task seemed simple, but was in fact a challenge. The walls must be completely square for the shelves to fit relative to the shelf mounting template. We used the template. I expected there would be some allowance for adjustment in the alignment of the shelves. I was wrong - no play here at all. With slightly imperfect wall square, the screw openings to attach the shelves to the shelf mounts were off by 1/16” and could not be adjusted, so would not install. The mounts were already in, so I had to make the shelves work! I dealt with this by cutting off the bottom of one of the two screw sleeve fittings for each shelf, and tossed the related screw liners, creating the play we needed to fit the shelves. My best guess is this was ultimately related to the slight lack of square caused by the warped back panel; there should be more tolerance in the shelf’s design.

With the base, walls, and shelves installed - and if everything had arrived on time, without defects - I might say that UP TO THIS POINT, a uTile install was easier than a traditional tile shower install. After this point in the install, however, I CANNOT say this. Why? The instructions are silent on how adjacent surfaces should attach/align to the “edges” of the shower - which becomes a time consuming, ridiculous “finishing” challenge with the product.

In our case, uTile installation left about a 3” gap between the (low) ceiling and the top of the uTile panel, and wall finishing was needed along the front edges of the uTile panels. The panels themselves have a 1/8” thick, 1” wide “lip” that is used for securing the panel to studs. The finished panel surface is raised a little more than 1/2” (maybe 9/16”?) above this surface. Moisture-resistant drywall or some other water-resistant material needs to be wrapped over the lip, and you must decide how much reveal of the (finished) side edge of the raised panel you want to see. To create a level-with or parallel surface to the wall panel face, you must install the material by first shimming behind the material to deal with the thickness of the panel’s lip, and then attaching the material to the nearby wall structure in a way that leaves a clean finishing line with the wall panel. Simply put, this work is a total pain in the **.

In our case, with a 48x32 shower, the total amount of drywall to install was probably less than 4 square feet, but was spread along 24 linear feet, and had 48+ linear feet of related edge-finishing bead, outside corner bead, inside corner bead, etc. The drywall work, to make this all look good, took 2 additional days, including drying time for mud. THIS TOTALLY WIPED OUT ANY INSTALLATION TIME VALUE.

Relatively, the shower door went up quickly, but even this was a bit difficult with the uTile panels. In the case of uTile, you must attach the shower door framing to the uTile panels using screws and plastic expansion plugs, because there is an air gap between the back of the uTile panel and the studs behind. You cannot just use a longer screw to get to the stud and torque it down, or you risk cracking or breaking the uTile panel. We drilled the holes for the plugs to the MAAX spec, but these turned out to be too large to keep the MAAX-supplied plugs from turning in the relatively thin panels as screws were installed. So, we visited Menards one more time to find plugs that would work better and hold firmly in the MAAX-specified holes. This is an issue with uTile design - more thickness at these locations on the panel would prevent this kind of issue and allow for proper attachment through to the studs.

THE WRAP UP

Now that it is all finished, it looks “ok”, but I wish we had simply installed a traditional tiled shower without all the hassles associated with uTile as a system. We have concerns about the system’s rather complete reliance on the integrity of the large number of silicone seals at every panel edge for water protection.

- Overall, I cannot recommend this system to a DIY’er who could just as easily install a traditional tile shower system.

Original Review: June 6, 2021

My upstairs bathroom had a flooding incident, and required a new floor and vanity. The contractor will be tearing most of the bathroom up, so why not replace the shower insert too - I thought. We ordered the shower insert at Lowe's on 4/23 morning. I informed the pro-desk that I'd like to add one additional glass shelf, so the staff went ahead and called MAAX to get the part number and double check on the delivery date. Over the phone, the Maax representative confirmed the 5/19 delivery, and added an extra glass shelf as I requested.

Lo and behold, 1 week before the delivery date, I called Lowes to follow up. They informed me that unfortunately the delivery has been delayed to 6/8. Okay, I understand, Covid and supply chain disruption is affecting everyone. We can last a bit more with using the bathroom with bare particle board floor and holes in the drywalls. Few days ago, I called the pro-desk again to check in with the order. The Lowes staff informed me that unfortunately, Maax have delayed the delivery date yet again. This time to 7/13. It is frustrating that there is literally no other option for me other than to wait and hope Maax will deliver, and that hopefully it will arrive in good condition. I understand Covid impacted just about everything, but please, have a better handle of your own inventory system.

We have a bathroom under construction that is unusable and calls to Customer Service have resulted in no calls back as promised and no additional information. Our reseller is helpless as they've purchased from a distributor who then bought from Maax. At this time, I want my money back for the surround and for the labor I need to pay for a plumber to come back and remove the surround so I can buy something in stock and complete this remodel. This has been a nightmare. If no one can help, please send me your home address so I can come use your bathroom.

I was told it would take 3-5 weeks to receive the check. That was on January 24, 2021. As of today and two ignored emails to Mr ** I have never been sent the check. I would have replaced the panel but since it was already installed I chose the compensation they approved. Since they won’t respond to my emails I am passing on my experience as a complaint/review. We like the looks of the shower unit but the customer service fell short of what was promised. My file# ** for the complaint and the processed order #** which was sent by them in an email. I would suggest if you buy the product look past the plastic it comes in. It can hide the defective seams before you install the panels. Maybe you can get better results by dealing with store where you made your purchase. Thanks.

Upon receipt I opened the panels firstly to find there was only fastening hardware in one side panel box, called Lowe's and they did get me the hardware from another box, nice of them, but meant still another trip to the store. Now the install started, placed the back panel in position and it has a big bow in it, right now I am really pissed. I am about to call Lowe's but know they can't help me. Not sure where to turn but will be posting here when I get a resolution, hopefully!!!