Fontana Showers Faucets Review & Rating Updated: December 31, 2024
Motion Sensor Faucets: 3 or 4 years
Motion Sensor Faucets: 3 or 4 years
Motion Sensor Faucets: 3 or 4 years
Law Requirements
Warranty Footnotes:
Motion sensor faucets: Free of drips and material or manufacturing defects for 3 years if purchased from Fontana Showers or 4 years if from Fontana Sensor Faucets. Other faucets: Free of material and manufacturing defects for 1 year.
- Read the the Fontana Showers faucet warranty.
- Learn more about faucet warranties.
This Company In Brief
Fontana Showers, LLC is an importer of Chinese-made faucets that it sells in the U.S. and Canada under the Fontana and Fontana Showers brands.
It sells through proprietary internet venues and internet retailers that host third-party sellers such as Amazon and Wayfair.
The company claims that it designs and manufactures "hundreds" of its faucets in Virginia, but has been unwilling to identify the site of its fabricating plant after repeated requests. Our research shows that its "Italian inspired designs' are, in fact, manufactured in China.
The Fontana Showers warranty is sub-par for North America and its customer service is so bad that it has been rated "F" by the Better Business Bureau for failing to respond to customer issues.
The company maintains that its faucets are certified to joint Canadian/U.S. standards and are legal to install in drinking water systems. However, our detailed research has determined that they not certified and are, in fact, contraband products.
Black Market Faucets: These faucets are not legal for sale in the U.S. and not legal for installation in a drinking water system in the U.S. or Canada. For more information on contraband faucets and how to avoid these potentially dangerous products, please visit Illegal and Black Market Faucets in North America.
According to the company, Fontana Showers was established in 1991. It did not appear in public records, however, until 2018 when Fontana Showers LLC was chartered by Maysara Khalid Sadiq as a Virginia limited liabilty company to import and sell decorative plumbing products.
The Company
As the name suggests, its principal products are showers and shower enclosures but it also sells sink faucets, and tub fillers as well as an extensive variety of accessories such as towel bars and rings, robe hooks, and toilet paper holders.
The company sells faucets in North America as Fontana and Fontana Showers.
The products are sold primarily through three proprietary websites:
They are also sold at other websites of companies owned or controlled by Mr. Sadiq, including
All of these entities operate out of the same Brookfield Corporate Drive address in Chantilly, Virginia and are, in effect, one enterprise with five different websites sharing purchasing, warehousing, and customer service.[1]
"Fontana Showers" is registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a standard character mark.
The products covered by the registration include
" Faucets; Plumbing fittings, namely, shower control valves; Plumbing fixtures, namely, shower sprayers; Shower heads; Shower enclosures; Shower faucet extensions; Showerheads and components thereof; Showers "
The list does not completely encompass the myriad of other products sold by the company under the Fontana Showers name.
The trademark has not been applied for in Canada or China.
The lack of registration does not affect the company's common-law ownership of the marks. But, it does mean that the ® symbol cannot be used in conjunction with the marks.
Fontana Showers LLC is just one of a group of Virgina entities owned or controlled by Maysara Khalid Sadiq or his family members under various names.[2] including JunoShowers LLC and BathSelect LLC, companies that also sell faucets over the internet although legally these entities no longer exist.
As of our last report on December 23, 20223, JunoShowers LLC and BathSelect LLC had been deemed "inactive" by the Virginia Secretary of State for failure to pay required fees. As of the date of this report, these companies remain inactive.
An inactive limited liability company does not exist. If it continues in business, its officers and directors lose their liability shield and are personally responsible for its financial debts or any legal obligations of the entity.
The Manufacturers
Although Fontana Showers claims to produce its own faucets in Virginia, in several places on its websites it refers to its "overseas factories," and import records also belie the claim. It buys faucets from manufacturers in China.
Not all of its suppliers are known outside of the company, but those that are known include:
- Changsha Angfa Information Tech Co. Ltd. is a Chinese trading company that provides some faucets to the group of companies owned by Mr. Sadiq. The manufacturer or manufacturers of the faucets cannot be determined from the records to which we have access.
- Fuzhou HDsafe Technologies Co., Ltd. is a Chinese manufacturer that supplies most of the automatic faucets sold by Fontana Showers.
- Shan Aqua Gallery Kitchen & Bath Factory is an bathwares manufacturer established in 2010 in Foshan, China.
- Aqua Gallery specializes in suites of bathtubs, showers, vanities, sinks, and faucets all matched in coordinated sets. .
- It manufactures almost entirely for export to the Americas from which it derives 92% of its revenues.
- Zhejiang Slion Fluid Control Co., Ltd. is a Chinese manufacturer that sells under its own Slion® brand outside of North America.
- In addition to the faucets supplied to Fontana Showers, it also provides some of the faucets sold by under the Artos brand.
- Zhejiang Slion Brassware Co. Ltd. founded in 1993 is one of the group of Slion companies in Yuhuan County, Zhejiang China manufacturing faucets and other plumbing products primarily for export.
These are almost certainly not the only companies that supply faucets to Fontana Showers, just the ones we can identify through import and customs records or product inspection.
Construction & Materials
The faucets are constructed conventionally. The body and spout of the faucets, as well as being decorative, are the components that channel water within the faucet.
Most Fontana Showers faucets are made from brass. A few touchless faucets intended primarily for commercial use and some kitchen faucets are in stainless steel.
Fontana Showers claims that the brass is lead-free, but there is no independent verification of this claim.
Stainless Steel
The stainless steel is, according to the company, 304 stainless, an alloy that includes chromium and nickel. The nickel gives the steel a crystalline structure which increases its strength. The chromium helps the steel resist corrosion.
Why Stainless Steel Does Not Rust: Properly alloyed stainless contains at least 10% chromium (which gives stainless its slight yellowish tinge) and a dollop of nickel. These form a coating of oxides and hydroxides on the outer surface of the steel that blocks oxygen and water from reaching the underlying metal, preventing rust from forming. The coating is very thin, only a few atoms thick, so thin that it is invisible to the eye under ordinary light but thick enough to protect the faucet.
Stainless 304, also known as "food-grade" stainless, is by far the most common alloy used to make kitchen utensils, silverware, cookware, and faucets.
Steel is harder than brass. It can be made in thinner profiles that use less material and still have more than adequate strength. But, steel is more difficult to fabricate and generally requires heavier machinery, so there usually is no cost savings over brass.
Brass
Brass is the preferred material for faucets for two reasons:
- Brass is strong but easy to work with. It casts, forges, and machines with relative ease.
- Brass is naturally anti-microbial. The copper in brass kills bacteria, retarding the build-up of potentially hazardous microbes inside a faucet.
But, brass has one serious drawback. It may contain lead.
Traditional (alpha) brass is a blend of copper and zinc with a small amount of lead (1.5% - 3.5%) added to make the material more malleable, less brittle, and easier to fabricate.
Lead, however, is now all but banned in North America in any drinking water component due to its toxicity to humans, particularly children.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), lead, even in small amounts, causes slowed growth, hearing loss, learning disorders, anemia, hyperactivity, and behavior issues.
Before 2014, a faucet sold in the U.S. or Canada could contain as much as 8% lead and still call itself lead-free.
Now the maximum lead content of those parts of a faucet that touch water is 0.25% (1/4 of 1%) – a bare trace. In fact, there may be more lead in the air you breathe than there is in a faucet that has been certified lead-free.
Fontana Showers claims that its brass faucets are made from lead-free brass. However, its brass faucets have not been certified lead-free, so this claim has not been independently confirmed by laboratory testing.
We do know, however, that Chinese faucet manufacturers tend to use much less expensive leaded brass in faucets made for their home market, and are not above exporting leaded brass faucets to North America. (See Lead in Chinese Faucets.) Many hundred of these illegal, contraband faucets can be found on Amazon alone.
To comply with the restrictions on lead, today's faucet brass replaces lead with other additives to reduce brittleness without adding toxicity. The most common is bismuth.
Bismuth is similar to lead – right next to lead on the periodic table of elements – but it is not harmful to humans.
It is, however, very expensive. It is 300 times rarer than lead, even rarer than silver, which is the reason that bismuth-brass alloys are considerably more expensive than leaded brass.
This increased cost has encouraged many faucet manufacturers to use substitute materials in their faucets where possible.
Zinc & Zinc/Aluminum Alloys
The most common substitute is zinc or a zinc-aluminum (ZA) alloy. One of the most common is called ZAMAK, a composition containing 4% aluminum.
Zinc is not as strong as brass and does not resist water pressure as well as brass. But, its use in non-pressurized parts of a brass faucet such as handles, base and wall plates, and is common even among manufacturers of luxury faucets.
It does no harm when used in these components, and may save consumers a few dollars.
Plastics
Plastic is the other commonly used substitute material. It may be safely used in incidental parts like base plates and has been largely trouble-free in aerators and as casings for ceramic cartridges but otherwise, its use is suspect especially if under water pressure.
Among those suspect uses is in the spray heads of kitchen faucets. Plastic spray heads (called "wands" in the faucet industry) have become the standard for many manufacturers, including some that sell upscale faucets such as
Fontana Showers kitchen faucet sprays are plastic.
These manufacturers give three reasons for their use of plastic:
- Plastic does not get uncomfortably hot in use like metal wands;
- Plastic is not as heavy and is more comfortable to hold for long periods of time; and
- Plastic is a lot cheaper than brass or stainless steel – even cheaper than zinc.
However, plastic wands also fail much more often than metal wands. And although engineers have made significant improvements to their reliability over the past decade, the problem has not been entirely solved.
Better wands are made of metal, insulated against excessive heat transmittal.
The Sure Cure for Too-Hot Spray Wands: The simple cure for spray wands that get too hot is to reduce the temperature of the water. Dishes do not need to be rinsed in scalding hot water.
Design & Styling
Fontana Showers faucets are a mix of contemporary and traditional designs. Most of the designs are conservative but some are very contemporary modern designs. They are fairly common Chinese designs, however, attractive enough but exhibiting no particular design originality.
A spokesman for company stated that its faucets are designed in Virginia by Fontana Showers and are proprietary designs.
We do not believe this is true for a number of reaons, the most compelling of which is that all of its faucet styles are sold by many other Chinese faucet companies – something that would not happen if the designs were actually owned by Fontan Showers.
They are, in fact, designs by Chinese faucet manufacturers, some of which are quite stylish, but they are by no means unique to Fontana Showers.
The goal of Chinese faucet manufacturers is to sell as many faucets as possible, which means keeping their designs well within the mainstream to appeal to as many potential buyers as possible.
Although some Chinese manufacturers have begun producing original designs, some of which have won awards in international design competitions, The manufacturers of Fontana Showers faucet are not among those companies.
The exception is the Aqua Arco faucet from Kubebath. It is fully certified and sells for $156.00 compared to the Geneva sale price of $260.40.
Designs are usually adopted from Europe and North America.
A style that sells well in these major markets will often be imitated by Asian factories (with minor changes to avoid patent infringement). The lag time is usually 3 to 5 years, so by the time a design appears in a Chinese faucet, it is no longer new.
Fontana Showers faucet designs fit this pattern. They are pleasant and often smartly styled, but most are over a decade old, some are well past voting age, and a few are looking at their thirtieth anniversary in the rear-view mirror.
Some Fontana faucets, however, follow Asian design motifs. The most obvious are its various Dragon and Swan faucets.
In Chinese tradition, the swan is a symbol of wisdom, intelligence, and Loyalty. The dragon symbolizes power, strength, and good fortune. Both of these symbols are extremely popular in Asian decor, less so in the West.
Faucet Components
The critical components used in Fontana Showers faucets are ceramic valve cartridges and aerators.
Valve Cartridges
The faucets we examined contained a universal configuration ceramic cartridge made by Wenzhou Hairui Ceramic Valve Co., Ltd., a Chinese manufacturer of ceramic valve cartridges.
This valve is popular with Chinese companies that manufacture inexpensive faucets for mass marketing. It does not maintain a website. Its reputation is that of a fairly average cartridge used mostly in faucets made for the domestic Chinese market, Eastern Europe, Russia, and India.
Replacement cartridges are sold in the U.S. and Canada. The cartridges have a standard configuration that is available from any number of cartridge companies, so a replacement should not be hard to find should the cartridge ever fail.
Aerators
Dozens of Chinese companies make aerators, most of which are entirely satisfactory. Fontana Showers does not use precision-engineered aerators like those made by Neoperl®, considered some of the world's best. But the aerators used looked to us to be perfectly capable.
Faucet aerators used to be simple devices that merely added a little air to soften the water stream so it would not splash out of the sink.
Today, however, they are also used to limit water volume to the lower flows required by federal and state water conservation laws, and in some cases, to prevent back-flow that can result in the contamination of household drinking water.
It is important, therefore, that this little device, often smaller than a dime, work well and be completely reliable.
Faucet Finishes
Fontana Showers has no standard finish chart. Its finishes are whatever its manufacturers can provide and change often.
A little research on its various websites, however, revealed the following finishes available as of the date of this report: Antique Brass, Black, Brushed Nickel, Chrome, Gold, Oil-rubbed Bronze, Rose Gold, Stainless Steel, and White.
A few faucets are available in in which a base finish is paired with an accent finish. Split finishes include Black with Chrome, Black with Nickel, and Black with Gold.
Stainless steel is available only on stainless steel faucets. It is not an applied finish, but the material of the faucet buffed and brushed to a nice finish.
The rest of the finishes are applied using one of three common processes: electroplating, physical vapor deposition (PVD), or powder coating.
Fontana Showers does not reveal the process used to produce a particular finish, something it may well not know. It does not finish its own faucets and may not be familiar with the processes used by its manufacturers. However, the process affects the durability and longevity of the finish and is information that is important to a faucet-buying decision.
Two of the finishes. Chrome and Brushed Nickel are almost certainly electroplated. Black, White, Gold, Rose Gold, and Oil-Rubbed Bronze are typically powder coatings, but could also be PVD finishes. In fact, a finish like Gold or Oil-Rubbed Bronze could be a powder coating from one manufacturer and a PVD finish from another.
Electroplating
involves immersing the faucet and the metal to be used as plating in an acid bath, then applying an electrical charge to both objects so metallic ions are drawn from the plating metal to the faucet.
Usually, multiple coats are applied, one or more undercoats and then two or more coats of the finish metal.
Finish Durability
Some finishes are more durable than others. Here are the Fontana Showers faucet finishes and their durability from most to least durable.
- is the old standby. It is a tough finish that will stand up to most abuse. but its durability depends on the metal used.
- Chrome is durable, nickel less so because it is inherently a softer metal (the reason chrome replaced nickel as the faucet finish of choice in the early 20th century.)
- (PVD) finishes are 10 to 20 times more scratch-resistant than electroplated chrome. They are also not affected by most household chemicals. In our experience, they are largely invulnerable to harm.
- is essentially a paint applied in a powdered form and then heated in an oven to cure. It is considered semi-durable with about the same scratch resistance as the finish on your car.
The process is potentially hazardous to the operator and the environment. It involves toxic and corrosive chemicals that must be disposed of safely. No other coating technology even comes close to the dangers involved in electroplating.
The top coat may be polished or brushed. Chrome, a relatively hard metal, is usually polished to a high shine. Nickel, a softer metal, is usually brushed to help hide the inevitable minor scratches.
Physical Vapor Deposition
or PVD is one of the latest space-age faucet finishing technology, rapidly replacing electroplating as the finish of choice.
Although the technology was discovered in the 19th century, it was not used in industry until the 1950s and then only rarely due to its great expense. Its first use was in nuclear reactors. Today,the technology is everywhere and the machinery required is getting smaller, faster, and cheaper all the time.
The process itself is a mixture of materials science and a flair for the artistic.
Load a chamber with unfinished faucet components, remove all the air, and add back a carefully calculated mix of nitrogen or argon and reactive gases.
Add a rod of the metal to be used for the coating. Heat that rod to a temperature so high that the metal dissolves into individual atoms. The atoms mix with the various reactive gases to get the color and finish effects you want and are then deposited in a very thin layer – 2 to 5 microns – on the faucets.
A micron is one-millionth of a meter or 1/26,000 of an inch. The average human hair is 83 microns thick. The smallest the human eye with excellent vision can see without magnification is about 5 microns.
Despite being just microns thick, a PVD coating is extremely dense and, in consequence, very hard and durable. By some estimates, it is up to 20 times more scratch-resistant than electroplated chrome.
From long experience, we know that PVD is nearly impossible to accidentally scratch or mar, never fades or changes color, and resists all forms of soiling.
A PVD finish can usually be maintained with just an occasional wipe from a damp cloth to remove water spots.
Powder Coating
is usually described as semi-durable
, not as robust as electroplated or PVD finishes, about as durable as the finish on your car, and requiring more care to maintain a like-new appearance.
It is essentially a dry paint in powder form applied using a special low-velocity spray gun that disperses the powder while giving it a positive electrical charge. The particles are drawn to the item to be finished which has been given a negative charge.
Understanding Finish Warranties
A finish warranty does not protect against everything that can go wrong with a faucet finish.
It covers defects caused by faulty materials or errors in the finishing process, generally subsumed under the rubric "manufacturing defects."
Blistering, delaminating, peeling, and spalling are the usual manufacturing defects. These are very rare – almost unheard of. The bad old days of peeling China chrome are long gone.
Most finish problems these days are caused by overzealous cleaning and ordinary wear and tear, neither of which is covered by a finish warranty.
If it peels, Fontana Showers pays. But, if you scratch it or it turns a funny color after you polished it a few times with Wham-X All Purpose Miracle Cleaner, you are on your own.
Once the powder is applied, the item being coated is baked in an oven which melts and bonds the powder and changes the structure of the coating into long, cross-linked molecular chains.
These chains are what give the coating its durability, reducing the risk of scratches, chipping, abrasions, corrosion, fading, and other wear issues.
Finish Care Instructions: Always read and follow the faucet seller's care instructions. Careful cleaning and maintenance not only preserve the good looks of your faucet but also your finish warranty.
Faucet Prices
Compared to sellers of uncertified Chinese-made faucets offered by other importers, prices on Fontana Showers faucets are unaccountably high – as much as three times the price at which the same faucet can be purchased elsewhere.
They are typically higher than the prices charged for similar faucets that are fully certified and legal to sell and install.
If Fontana faucets were fully certified and protected by an exceptionally strong long-term warranty combined with responsive and effective post-sale customer service – like – we could see some justification for the pricing. But, unfortunately, the warranties on the faucets are substantially sub-par, and customer service considerably below average.
We, therefore, have to conclude that, for the most part, the faucets are overpriced and the price-to-value relationship is extremely poor.
Faucet Warranty
The Fontana Showers one-year faucet warranty is of very short duration, incomplete, and violates federal warranty law. It should be an embarrassment to the company. But, Fontana Showers does not seem to be a company that embarrasses easily.
The warranty on motion sensor faucets is three years if purchased from the Fontana Showers website and four years if purchased from the Fontana Sensor Faucets website. We found no obvious reason for the difference.
On all other faucets the warranty is one year – barely a warranty at all.
All the company will do is provide replacement parts, but the customer has to pay the "shipping and handling" to return defective parts to Fontana Showers for examination and to ship replacement parts from the company.
For more detailed information on how to read and interpret faucet warranties, see Faucet Basics, Part 6: Understanding Faucet Warranties.
Not very customer-friendly and, from a purely business point of view, incredibly unwise.
Shipping and handling costs the company comparatively little, so it's a good investment in customer loyalty. Whereas, forcing an already aggrieved customer into paying for shipping and handling just increases annoyance and virtually guarantees that the customer will never again buy a Fontana Showers product.
The provision is a strong indication that the company does not give much thought to repeat sales.
Despite the flowery laudations bestowed upon Fontana Showers faucets in its sales materials, the truth about what company management actually thinks about the durability and longevity of its faucets lies in its warranty.
Marketing puffery costs very little, but a warranty forces a company to pledge its hard-earned dollars. How long a company will risk its money is a very good indicator of how long the company expects its faucets to perform without a failure.
The Fontana Showers faucet warranties strongly suggest that management has almost no confidence in its faucets. It is willing to bet its dollars that they will last one to four years without failing, but no longer.
In addition to the coverage problems with the warranties, they do not comply with federal Warranty law.
Consequential & Incidental Damages" Damages other than the defect in the faucet itself.For example, your Fontana faucet leaks and damages your cabinets. The leak is a "direct damage" to the faucet. The damage to the cabinets is a "consequential damage".If you need to hire a lawyer to take your case to court, the attorney's fees are an "incidental damage".Collectively, consequential and incidental damages are called "indirect" or "special" damages.
The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (15 U.S.C. §2301) specifies the content and form of consumer product warranties. Fontana Showers warranties do not comply with this law. In particular, they do not …
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Non-Compliant Captioning: The company clearly considers the warranties to be limited warranties. But, to be a limited warranty, a warranty must clearly
designate
the warranty as a limited warranty with the magic word "limited" in its caption or title.
- The word "limited" is required to give an early warning to the buyer that the warranty is intended to provide only limited protection.
- Unfortunately, the Fontana Showers warranty is captioned just "Fontanahowers® Product Warranty". The word "limited" is nowhere to be found. The missing "limited" automatically converts the warranty to a full, unlimited warranty. (15 U.S.C. §2303(a), 16 CFR §700.6)
- A full warranty gives the consumer many more rights. Among these is the right to have any plumber labor required to uninstall, repair, and reinstall the faucet and all shipping and handling charges paid for by Fontana Showers.
- Warranty Claim Procedure: The warranty must provide "A step-by-step explanation of the procedure which the consumer should follow" to make a claim under the warranty including the mailing address or telephone number to use.
- The warranty provides no information about how to go about making a warranty claim, which information or documents are needed, or even what telephone number or email to use.
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Incidental and Consequential Damages: The warranty's attempted disclaimer of consequential and incidental damages is not clarified with the following required statement:
"Some States do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages, so the above limitation or exclusion may not apply to you."
- Without the required clarificaation, the attempt to exclude incidental and consequential damagesis void and has no effect.
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Missing Required Statement: The warranty doe not include the following statement, required to be in every consumer warranty:
"This warranty gives you specific legal rights, and you may also have other rights which vary from State to State"
- Without this statement, the entire warranty is probably voided, which means that the state law implied warranty of merchantability takes over and becomes the sole warranty. The implied warranty gves the buyer many more rights.
Customer Service
To complement its below-par warranty, Fontana Showers provides substandard customer service.
Our experience with its customer service has been far from favorable.
We did not conduct our usual formal tests. They do not work with very small companies since agents soon realize they are being tested and change their behavior.
However, we did have our researchers call from different parts of the U.S. and Canada with typical questions and problems that customer agents might encounter.
In general, the results were unsatisfactory.
Agents seem to know little about Fontana faucets beyond the limited information already on the company's website.
They could tell us nothing about the finishing processes used or the source of cartridges.
Misrepresentations were common.
- Agents insisted that the faucets were certified to joint U.S./Canadian standards even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they are not.
- They claimed that Fontana Showers manufactured faucets of its own design in Virginia, again contrary to overwhelming evidence that the faucets are manufactured in China, including "Made in China" stamped on the boxes containing our test faucets.
- One gentleman offered to provide us with listing certificates showing the faucets' certifications but only if we agreed to remove any mention of Maysara Khalid Sadiq, the owner of the companies, from our report.
- Since we don't allow faucet companies to censor our reports and do not believe such listing certificates exist, we declined his generous offer.
Just to be certain, however, we rechecked all eight organizations accredited to test and certify faucets in the U.S. or Canada and found neither Fontana nor Fontana Showers mentioned by any certifying athority except in California (see more below).
We rate the company's customer support as "unsatisfactory."
BBB Rating
The Better Business Bureau agrees with our assessment. It rates Fontana Showers an F, its lowest score, on its scale of A+ to F for "failure to handle customer issues." Its report states that Fontana Showers LLC failed to respond to 70% of the complaints filed by customers with the Bureau.[3]
This BBB complaint is typical:
"We placed an order on Jan 20, 2021, for bathroom Faucets and Soap Dispensers which totaled $1m472.58. After several weeks of calling to find out the status of our order, we were told the items were not in stock and they may have them in March. ""We are in the middle of a renovation and can not wait until March, so we asked for a refund. We were told the refund would take in 3/5 business days."
"I have been calling daily since February 4. The times they have answered, I am told the accounting department is short-handed and they have other refunds to process and we should receive our refund in 3/5 business days."
"I have tried to talk to a supervisor who is never available. Most times when I call there is no answer and I have left quite a few voice messages."
"No company should be allowed to hold on to someone's money this long. They had no problem taking our money right away. All we desire is to get our refund which rightly belongs to us."
Fontana Showers did not respond to this complaint.
Fontana Showers Websites
Fontana Showers has three websites as identified above. This review is of its main site: FontanaShowers.com.
The site is colorful. Its products are well illustrated and navigation is menu-driven and intuitive. We had no problems moving through the site.
The site search function is fairly robust. We used it to find all products finished in gold and it displayed 72 pages of gold products. Limiting the search to "gold faucets" reduced the result to 45 pages, but still showed tub fillers. Using "Gold sink Faucets" did the trick, reducing the results to a mere 19 pages.
For non-product searches, however, it was a bust. It could not find "warranty" or "returns."
The site has no filters that allow the inclusion of only those characteristics wanted. The user has to rely on pre-defined categories such as "contemporary faucets" which are effective, but if the user wants characteristics not pre-defined, the task of finding an appropriate faucet is much harder. A search for "traditional faucets," for example, produced no results.
The site does not make the distinction between sink fauces, shower faucets, and tub fillers. Technically they are all faucets but what most consumers mean by the term "faucet" is sink faucet.
Clicking on the product "faucets' displays page after page of tub fillers and showers as well as sink faucets. There seems to be no way to filter out the unwanted tub fillers and showers which makes finding a faucet that much more difficult and cumbersome.
Products are displayed in images with a brief caption. The images are not thumbnails, but larger images that take up 1/4th the width of the page on a full sized console, as much as all the page on a smart phone. This makes paging through the products very time-consuming. At 36 images per page on a desk monitor, 19 pages are required to display all of the products. Smaller images would convey the same visual information, and take up less space.
Once the user has found a suitable faucet, basic information about the faucet is lacking. Of the five links on the listing page: [Installation Instructions], [Specifications], [BIM Object File], [Product Video], and [Warranty], only Product Video and Warranty connect to the desired information, the rest do nothing when clicked except call up a contact page in which the user is invited to submit a request.
The same links are repeated further down the page under the heading "DETAILS" along with a [Repair amd Maintenance Guide], [3d Product Rendering], and the warranty, this time described as a [5-Year Product Warranty Sheet].
The [3d Product Rendering] does not link to a product rendering but to a page describing how product renderings are created. The [5-Year Warranty Link] displays the same 1-year faucet warranty. Not a single product mentioned in the warranty is actually guaranteed for five years.
A considerable amount of basic information about the faucets is missing.
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Certifications:
Fontana Showers claims that all of its faucets are certified. If true, then it should list the certifications that apply to each faucet with a link to the online listing certificate.
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Faucet Valve:
No information is provided about a faucet's valve. The name of the cartridge manufacturer is needed. There are good ceramic cartridges and not-so-good ceramic cartridges. To make an informed buying decision the buyer needs to know the actual manufacturer. Otherwise, there is no way to judge the quality of the cartridge.
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Type of Finish:
The type of finish is not disclosed. Type of finish (electroplated, powder coating, PVD, etc.) is important to the long-term durability of the finish and the type and amount of care and maintenance required.
These are just some of the many gaps in the basic information that should be provided about a Fontana Showers faucet.
Legal Compliance
Faucets are a part of your drinking-water system and every part of that system, right down the solder joints, is strictly regulated.
Not just anything with a sparkling finish that delivers water is a faucet as the laws define faucets in North America.
To be a faucet, the product must be legal to sell as a faucet and legal to use as a faucet in a drinking water system.
If it is not legal to sell as a faucet and/or not legal to use as a faucet but is advertised and sold as a faucet, then something illegal is going on.
The usual legal term for such activity is "fraud" and "conspiracy to commit fraud."
And not a little fraud, but fraud on a large scale involving every Fontana faucet offered for sale.
The sale of a faucet is prohibited by federal law in the U.S. if …
- It is not registered with the Department of Energy (DOE). (10 CFR §430). Fontana Showers faucets do not appear in the DOE CCMS database of registered faucets.
- It does not bear a "a permanent legible marking to identify the manufacturer"[4] located where it can be viewed after installation. (16 CFR § 305.24). None of the Fontana faucets we acquired for testing had the required marking.
A faucet that hasn't been certified by an independent, accredited laboratory as meeting all U.S./Canadian standards cannot be legally installed in a household water system (including a private well system) in the United States or Canada.
- ASME A112.18.1/CSA 125.1, The design and performance standards for faucets, including durability, reliability, longevity, and ease of repair.
- ANSI/NSF 372 and ANSI/NSF 61: Standards that confirm that a faucet is free from lead and other toxic substances and that water flowing through a faucet does not pick up harmful materials. contaminenants, or pathogens.[4]
A faucet that passes all of the many tests is listed as certified in a public database available for all to see and is legal to use in a household water system.
Testing and Certification
A faucet company cannot test and certify its own faucets.
To ensure that faucets comply with all North American standards, they must be tested and certified by an accredited independent laboratory.
Fontana Showers insists that its faucets are certified to North American standards and that at least some of its bath faucets are Watersense® listed. Our research showed the contrary. Neither Fontana nor Fontana Showers iappears in a listing certificate issued by any of the organizations accredited to test and certify faucets and none appear in he EPA list of Watersense-certified faucets.
Fontana Showers knows it has a prblem with its lack of certifications and seeks to shift responsibility for that lack to its customers when a plumbing inspector discovers that the faucets are contraband. Here is Fontana's disclaimer buried in its warranty:
"… [P]roducts being produced in our factories overseas, are not guaranteed to meet U.S. inspection requirements. All customers are responsible for install [sic] and removal costs of our products in case products do not pass inspection due to lack of specific certification paperwork.
We doubt that this disclaimer will save the company from civil liability for fraudulent inducement, however, and preduct that it will have no effect when the various government agencies responsible for enforcing faucet regulations, underfunded and understaffed as they are, finally get around to Fontana Showers.
Legal Actions
The California Energy Commission (CEC) has already taken action against the company for failing to comply with California faucet regulations. The CEC sued the Fontana Showers, LLC for illegally selling unapproved faucets in California from April 2019 to May 2019.
To settle the lawsuit, the company paid a lesser penalty of $1,800.00 in 2022 and agreed to sell only approved products in California in the future.
Comparable Faucets
Faucets made in Asia comparable to Fontana Showers in quality with the same or a better warranty, but not necessarily comparable for design or price, include
Conclusions
We can see absolutely no reason to buy Fontana Showers faucets.
They are pricey, and in our judgment not a good value tor the price.
Dozens of companies (see the list above) sell comparable faucets that are fully certified and legal to sell and install in the U.S. and Canada for about the same or even a lower price with a better (often a lifetime) warranty and superior customer support.
The Fontana Showers warranty is very sub-par If a faucet fails after one, three, or four years, you are entirely on your own. There is no adequate source for replacement parts.
Most of the faucets are brass and have the potential for lead contamination. Fontana Showers claims the faucets are made of lead-free brass, but that claim is unsupported by independent testing and certification and cannot be verified. Chinese manufacturers such as those that supply Fontana faucets are particularly suspect when it comes to leaded brass faucets. China has no regulation limiting the use of lead in faucets made in that country.
It may be that the company's faucets have not been certified because the company is fully aware that they are not lead-free and will fail the lead-free tests. Even worse, they may have already been tested and failed. Testing laboratories do not publish reports on faucets that fail certification testing.
In any event, these are contraband faucets. They are illegal to install in a drinking-water system anywhere in the U.S. or Canada that has a plumbing code.
A plumber probably will not install one for you, If you install it yourself and are caught, at the very least you will have to replace the illegal faucet at your expense and possibly pay a small fine. In an increasing number of jurisdictions, however, you can go to jail for knowing and intentional violations.
Continuing Research
We are continuing to research the company. If you have experience with Fontana Showers faucets, good, bad, or indifferent, we would like to hear about it, so please contact us or post a comment below.
Footnotes
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Some of the other Virginia entities associated with Mr. Sadiq include
- Juno Showers Co. (VA ID: 07984594), trading as Juno Showers
- JunoShowers.com Co. (VA ID: 07984594, Inactive),
- Horizon Group Services, Inc.(VA ID: 07551203, Inactive)
- Horizon Direct Depot, LLC (VA ID: S4967677) trading as Cascada Showers
- Horizon Construction Group, Inc. (VA ID: 07612724, Inactive)
- According to Radaris.com, Mr. Sadiq has appeared in public documents as Maysara Sadi, Maysara Sadek, Maysara ElSadek, Maysara Sadik, and Khalid S. Maysara.
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The BBB rating of Fontana Showers' sister companies is as follows:
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Bath Select:
F
for failure to respond to about 70% of the complaints received about the company or its products. -
June Showers:
C
for the number of complaints filed against the company and failure to respond.
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Bath Select:
- The term "manufacturer" means "any person who manufactures, produces, assembles, or imports" a faucet. (16 CFR § 305.2)