Swiss Madison Faucets Review & Rating Updated: November 25, 2024

Imported

China

Swiss Madison LLC

trading as

Swiss Madison Well Made Forever

110 Fieldcrest Ave.

Edison, NJ 08837

434-623-4766

info@swissmadison.com

Rating

Business Type

For more information on the five faucet company business types, see Faucet Companies

Product Range

Kitchen and Bath Faucets

Certifications

Brands

Swiss Madison

Street Price

$54-$235

Warranty Score

Cartridge

One Year¹

Finishes

One Year

Mechanical Parts

One Year

Proof of Purchase

Required

Transferable

No¹

Meets U.S. Warranty
Law Requirements

No

Warranty Footnotes:

1. "Should there be any defects in materials or craftsmanship under regular use that are discovered in the first year after delivery, Swiss Madison will provide replacement parts at no charge, or at its discretion, replace any product or part of the product that is deemed defective."

2. "The warranty only applies to the original purchaser."

Download/Read/Print the Swiss Madison faucet warranty.

Learn more about faucet warranties.

This Company In Brief

Swiss Madison LLC is an importer, selling primarily on Ama­zon.com and other websites that host third-party sellers.

Its principal products are lavatory sinks and toilets of which it sells a large variety. It also sells kitchen and bathroom fau­cets, showers, and accessories.

The products are made in China by a variety of manufacturers.

The Company

Swiss Madison LLC was founded by Mendel and Samuel Greisman in 2016 as a limited liability company chartered in New Jersey. It is an importer, wholesaler, distributor, and retailer of plumbing fixtures and fittings for the kitchen and bath, along with related accessories. All of its products are manufactured in China.

The company maintains a website on which it sells fau­cets, but its primary outlet is Amazon.com where it is just one of over 550 brands of contraband fau­cets offered for sale.

The faucets are also sold at Wayfair.com, Home Depot (online only), FaujcetDirect (a Ferguson Enterprises website), and Lowes (online only).

We were surprised to find the fau­cets on a "Build with Ferguson" website like FaucetsDirect. Ferguson is usually very careful to avoid contraband fau­cets. Home Depot and Lowes are less so, and Amanzon and Wayfair not at all.

The company has registered Swiss Madison Well Made Forever as what is called a "wordmark," a form of trademark that "consists of standard characters without claim to any particular font style, size, or color." In other words, only the bare text itself is registered.The only products included in the registration are "sinks, toilets, and bathroom vanities." It does not include showers or faucets.

The stylized Swiss Madison logo that appears at the top of this report is not registered. The company also filed for the words "Swiss Madison" standing alone as a trademark but the applcation was deemed abandoned by the Trademark Office in 2018.

Swiss Madison's applicatiion for trademark on Carlton Plumbing id listed by the Trademark Office as "pending." Carlton Plumbing is a brand under which the company sells fixtures and fitting through Home Depot. At the date of this report, the products did not include water faucets.

Swiss Madison Manufacturer(s)

Using our usual methods, we were unable to identify the actual manufacturer or manufacturers of Swiss Mad­ison fau­cets.

We do know from inspection and origin labeling, however, that the fau­cets are manufactured in China.

We asked Swiss Mad­ison to identify its manufacturing sources, but the company did not respond to the request.

Swiss Madison Faucet Materials

The company claims that Swiss Mad­ison fau­cets are made from brass. However, there is no independent verification that the brass is lead-free as required by law. Verification is partaicularly important for faucets made in China where lead in faucets is not regulated.

Not every part of the fau­cets is brass, however.

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.

Brass has one serious drawback, however: it may contain metallic lead.

Traditional (Alpha) brass is a blend of copper and zinc with a small amount of lead 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 stunted growth, learning disorders, hearing loss, anemia, hyperactivity, and other 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.

Today, the maximum lead content of those parts of a fau­cet that touch water is 0.25% (1/4 of 1%), basically just 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.

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.

Bismuth is 300 times rarer than lead, even rarer than silver, which is the reason that Bis­muth-brass alloys are considerably more costly than leaded brass.

This increased cost has encouraged many manufacturers to use substitute materials in their fau­cets where possible.

Zinc & Zinc/Aluminum Alloys

The common substitute is zinc or a zinc-aluminum (ZA) alloy. One of the most used 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 its use 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.

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.

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.

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.

Unfortunately, all Swiss Mad­ison kitchen fau­cet sprays are plastic. We were unable to find a single fau­cet model that included a metal wand.

Swiss Madison Faucet Design & Styling

Swiss Madison fau­cets are contemporary designs. Most of the kitchen fau­cets are pre-rinse spring-style fau­cets. The styles are conservative – fairly common designs, attractive enough but exhibiting no particular design originality. Similar styles are available from nearly every fau­cet company that sells Chinese-made kitchen fau­cets.

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.

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.

An example is the starkly angular Pierre fau­cet which is a close copy of the Grid^™ fau­cet that won a prestigious Good Design award from the Chicago Athenaeum in 2019.

(The same copycat faucet is also sold by Shenzhen Huayuda Electronic Business Co., Ltd. under the HomeLava brand. HomeLava also sells contraband faucets.)

Swiss Madison's fau­cet designs are pleasant and often smartly styled but many are over a decade old, some are reaching voting age.

Swiss Madison Faucet Components

The critical components used in Swiss Mad­ison fau­cets are ceramic valve cartridges and aerators.

Valve Cartridges

The faucets we examined contained ceramic cartridges made in China.

Standard configurations are usually an advantage to consumers over proprietary cartridge designs, such as those used in faucets. Faucet companies control the prices of their proprietary replacement cartridges, so, like proprietary car parts, the prices tend to be fairly high. Standard configuration cartridges, however, are competitive, made by dozens of companies, and prices for replacement cartridges tend to be lower.

The downside, however, is that not all standard configuration cartridges are tested and certified to North American standards. This is especially true of cartridges made in China. Dozens of Chinese companies manufacture ceramic valves, most of which do not export, so we never encounter them. Those that do export are fairly well known.

Some of the valve cartridges we found in Swiss Madison faucets were devoid of maker's markings, making it impossible to determine their manufacturer. We were, however, able to identify two of the companies supplying Swiss Madison cartridges:

• Ningbo Wanhai Cartridge Technology Co., Ltd. selling cartridges under the Wanhai^® brand and

• Ruian Weixin Sanitary Ware Accessories Co., Ltd. selling the Veixin^® cartridge.

Neither of these is considered a top-drawer valve cartridge.

Wanhai cartridges are common in inexpensive Chinese-made fau­cets exported to North America. The Veixin cartridge is in widespread use in China, but almost unknown in North America. Swiss Madison is, as far as we know, the only imported fau­cet brand to use the cartridge.

Faucet valve cartridges like faucets themselves, must be tested and certified before being used in a faucet in the U.S. or Canada. There are a great many tests, but the most important are the life-cycle and burst tests.

The standard North Amer­ican life-cycle test requires operating a cartridge through 500,000 cycles under 60 psi of water pressure without a single failure. At one cycle per second, the test takes six 24-hour days to complete.

The burst test simulates the surge in water pressure that commonly occurs when a faucet is shut off suddenly. It subjects the cartridge to a surge pressure of 500 pounds per square inch (psi) – ten times normal household water pressure – for one minute. If it leaks or deforms under surge pressure, it fails the test and is not certified.

Wanhai cartridges have been tested and certified to North American standards.

We were not, however, able to find a listing certificate for Veixin cartridges. They have been certified only to the Chinese (GB18145-2014) standard, which is much less exacting, requiring a life-cycle test of only 30,000 cycles, so we have no idea how well they will stand up to use in a normal kitchen.

Learn more about faucet valves and cartridges at Faucet Basics: Part 2 Faucet Valves & Cartridges,

Aerators

There are dozens of companies in China that manufacture and spray-head assemblies. Most are at least adequate.

Faucet 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 backflow that can result in the contamination of household drinking water.

It is important, therefore, that this little device, often smaller than a dime, be the best available.

The consensus of the industry is that the best-engineered areators are made by Neoperl^®, a Swiss company, followed closely by Amfag S.r.l., a company manufacturing in Casaloldo, Italy.

For lack of identifying marks, we were unable to identify the source of the areators used in Swiss Madison faucets but determined that they were neither Neoperl nor Amfag.

In our testing, they modified the stream of water just as they were supposed to so it did not splash out of the sink. However, we do not know how resistant they are to mineral accumulation, which is the most common cause of clogging, or how long they will last in ordinary household use. Only comprehensive certification can provide that information, and Swiss Madison faucets are not certified.

Swiss Madison Faucet Finishes

We found six finishes on Swiss Mad­ison fau­cets: Chrome, Matte Black, Matte White, Brushed Nickel, Brushed Gold, and Rose Gold (which most other companies identify as Copper).

Some faucets are available in a . Usually, the body is Matte Black and the handle is blue, red, or yellow.

Swiss Madison does not disclose the type of finish used on its fau­cets. However, from examination, we believe chrome and Brushed Nickel are electroplated. Matte Black and Matte White are probably a . Brushed Gold and Rose Gold are likely a (PVD) finish.

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.

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 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 technologies, 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.

Today,the technology is everywhere and the machinery required is getting smaller, faster, and cheaper all the time.

The process itself mixes art with science.

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.

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.

Swiss Madison Warranty

Swiss Madison's tagline is Well Made Forever.

In practice, however, Swiss Mad­ison's forever appears to be just one year. That is the length of the company's fau­cet warranty.

Indicator of Confidence

Generally, the duration of a fau­cet company's warranty is a very good indicator of the level of confidence management has in the durability and longevity of its fau­cets.

A lifetime warranty shows considerable confidence, a one-year warranty not so much.

A Company's literature may gush ad nauseam about its manufacturing acumen, quality materials, careful craftsmanship, and durable, long-lasting finishes, but this is just marketing fluff.

Its real opinion about the quality of its manufacturing, materials, workmanship, and durability is exposed for all to see in its warranty.

The warranty is essentially the company's bet on how long its faucets will last without defect. It may be that Swiss Mad­ison fau­cets will last more than a year but the company does not want to cover that bet with its own dollars. It would much rather the dollars be yours.

The standard North American fau­cet warranty pioneered by over a half-century ago is for the lifetime of the buyer. A one-year warranty is just a half-step up from having no warranty at all.

As a buyer, you should be aware of the implications of this very short-term warranty. Exactly what problems with Swiss Madison faucets discourage management from offering a stronger warranty? We don't know and odds are we will never find out. But, management does. Its honest opinion about their durability expressed in its faucet warranty is something to pay attention to.

Violations of Federal Warranty Law

In addition to being of very short duration, the warranty does not comply with the minimum requirements for consumer product warranties mandated by the federal Mag­nu­son-Moss War­ranty Act (15 U.S.C. §2301). In particular, the warranty does not …

• 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.

• Modify its attempted disclaimer of consequential and incidental damages 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."

  as required by law.

• 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"

Drafting Problems

The warranty is poorly drafted. We doubt it was written by a lawyer, but if so, he or she urgently needs a refresher on warranty law.

A warranty is a legal contract that must comply with a complicated federal warranty law that requires every consumer warranty to be in "clear and simple" language so it can be understood by the average consumer without the need for interpretation by a lawer.

It is not a document that a business school graduate is qualified to write. The usual result is a warranty that has many drafting problems.

One problem with the Swiss Madison warranty is multiple redundancy. For example, early in the warranty, it states that

"This warranty applies only to the original purchaser."

Clear enough, so there is no reason to restate it several paragraphs later but it does with this provision

"This warranty extends only to the original purchaser and first consumer."

A provision needs to be stated just once. Twice is once too many, adding verbiage without adding meaning.

This is just one redundancy. There are others. There are also a few oddities in the warranty.

The first is this requirement:

"This one-year warranty will be voided if … [t]he product has in any way been modified from its packaged state.

This would be a difficult requirement to meet. A Swiss Mad­ison fau­cet "in its packaged state" is in a box. It has to be removed from the box for installation. But, as soon as it is removed from the box, it is no longer "in its packaged state" and the warranty is void. This provision, if taken literally, turns an already skimpy one-year warranty into a millisecond warranty.

What we think the warranty is trying to convey is that any modification to the faucet voids the warranty. There is no need for this "packaged state" business. But, if this intent of the warranty, it still has a problem. The problem is the word "void" – a term that is vastly overuse by unskilled warranty writers.

Void means exactly what you think it does – the warranty is done, over, ended, finished, kaput. A drastic penalty, so drastic that a court will probably not sustain the provision. Here is an example of why.

A customer buys an Swiss Madison Avalon faucet but she does not like the red handle and and paints the handle a lovely chartreuse to match her kitchen cabinets.

A week later her Avalon faucet starts to leak.

Unfortunately she now has no warranty. Why? Because a week ago she painted the faucet handle – painting is a modification. At that instant, the warranty was voided even though painting the handle did absolutely no harm to the faucet and has no connection to the leak.

Instead of void, the warranty should state that if a modification to the faucet results in a defect, the "defect is not covered by the warranty." Simple, direct, easy to understand, and not overreaching to the extent that a court would be tempted to void the provision (and that's the correct use of "void.")

Another strange provision is this:

"All items not disclosed within the warranty are not addressable within the responsibility of Swiss Mad­ison. Certain states have variances regarding implied warranties; in those situations, we remain fully compliant.

if this is Greek to you, don't worry, you are in the majority. This isn't just "legalese", it's incomprehensible "legalese." None of the lawyers who read this provision could make any sense of it. However, whatever it means, it is certainly not written in the "clear and simple" language required by Magnuson-Moss.

The final provision to note is this one:

"Swiss Madison makes no implication that its products comply with any local building or plumbing codes. It is the consumer's responsibility and obligation to determine local code compliance prior to and during installation."

This provision evidences what lawyers call "consciousness of guilt."

The company has been in the faucet business long enough to be fully aware that its uncertified fau­cets may not be legally installed in a drinking water system. This provison attempts to shift any responsibility for failing to meet legal requirements onto its customers.

It won't work.

By selling the product as a fau­cet, the company tacitly warrants that the product meets all of the legal requirements of a water fau­cet and is lawful for the "ordinary and customary use" of the fau­cet in a drinking water system.

Every state's implied Warranty of Merchantability will make short work of this provision. An uncertified water fau­cet is not merchantable.

Indeed, selling a faucet that cannot legally be lused as a faucet could well be a violation of Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act as a deceptive business act or practice.

Additionally, most state laws prohibit business practices that cause "the liklihood of confusion or of misunderstanding as to the … certification of goods or services." (Neb. Rev. Stat. §87-302(a)(2))

Swiss Madison Customer Service

We have not tested Swiss Madison's post-sale service with our usual battery of structured tests. The test battery does not work with very small companies. Employees quickly realize they are being tested and change their behavior accordingly. We do, however, contact the company from time to time at random with a series of inquiries to test product knowledge, responsiveness, and demeanor. These contacts are ongoing but will not be completed in time for this report.

The Better Business Bureau rates the company's response to customer issues a D on a scale of A+ to F. The rating is based on the number of complaints filed against the business over the past three years and the adequacy of its response to the complaints. Swiss Madison is not accredited by the BBB.

Swiss Madison Website

The Swiss Madison website is well structured with menu-driven, intuitive navigation. The search feature is robust, easily finding specific products by name or model number. It also performs well when searching for all products in a specified finish, useful when trying to coordinate elements of a kitchen or bath.

However, it failed non-product searches. A search on warranty brought up every product with a warranty, but not the warranty document itself.

Its faucet listings do a fair job of providing the detailed information necessary for an informed buying decision, but some are missing. Among the most critical are:

• Certifications:

  Listings routinely identify fau­cets as certified (using the code "cUPC") when in fact they are not listed as certified by any accredited organization authorized to test and certify water fau­cets to North American standards.

• Faucet Valve:

  No information is provided about a fau­cet's valve other than the fact that it is a ceramic cartridge. But, in addition to this basic specification, the buyer needs to know the name of the cartridge manufacturer. There are good ceramic cartridges and not-so-good ceramic cartridges. To make an informed buying decision the buyer needs to know the manufacturer. Otherwise, there is no way to judge the quality of the cartridge.

• Our request to the company for the identity of its cartridge suppliers received no response.

• Type of Finish:

  The type of finish is not disclosed. The 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.

• Written Warranty:

  U.S. law requires a consumer product warranty to be in writing and available at the point of sale so it may be read by a prospective buyer before the sale.

• For online sellers it is sufficient compliance with the law if a written warranty is posted with each fau­cet listing on the website or a conspicuous link to the warranty is displayed with each fau­cet listing. The website does not display the warranty document itself with each fau­cet listing or a conspicuous link to the warranty document.

Legal Actions

Swiss Madison LLC was fined $$14,680.00 in 2024 by the California Energy Commission (CEC) for selling or offering to sell faucets and showers from 2018 to 2022 that did not meet the efficiency standard, were improperly marked, and were not registered with the CEC as required by law.

Testing & Certification

Although Swiss Madison claims that many of its fau­cets are certified, our research found that they are not.

Comparable Faucets

Faucets made in China comparable to Swiss Mad­ison in quality with the same or a better warranty, but not necessarily comparable for design or price, include

Conclusions

Swiss Madison has an interesting line of fau­cets, well-selected for design and finish. The prices are on par with other fau­cets made in China, and the product is cleverly marketed.

The company has potential, but Messrs. Greisman need to step back from their razor-sharp focus on marketing and take care of the basic nuts and bolts of fau­cet-selling. This includes ensuring that their products are listed as certified and registered with the Department of Energy and that the Swiss Madi­son warranty fully complies with U.S. warranty law.

Until all this is done, there is absolutely no reason to buy a Swiss Mad­ison fau­cet. The seller has ignored almost every law and regulation that applies to the importation, distribution, and sale of fau­cets in North America.

• The faucets are not tested and certified compliant with joint U.S./Canadian standards of reliability, durability, and safety as required by the law in both Can­ada and the U.S. Consequently, the presence of toxic substances in the fau­cets such as lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury has not been excluded. Because these fau­cets are made in China where the use of lead in fau­cets is not regulated, the risk of lead contamination is even greater than usual.

• Buyers of Swiss Madison fau­cets are not protected against defects by a substantial written warranty enforceable in U.S. and Canadian courts. The one-year Swiss Mad­ison warranty is nowhere near adequate buyer protection.

The prices on Swiss Madison fau­cets make them attractive but, as the list above demonstrates, a great many other companies sell Chinese-made fau­cets in roughly the same designs for about the same price that are fully certified, legal to use in a drinking water system, and backed by a substantial written warranty. Many are guaranteed for the lifetime of the buyer.

Swiss Madison fau­cets cannot be legally installed in a public or private drinking water system anywhere in the U.S. or Can­ada. A plumber probably will not install one for you, and if you do it yourself, you risk, at the very least, having to replace the fau­cet with a legal product and the possibility, in some jurisdictions, of a fine and some jail time.

We are continuing to research the company. If you have experience with Swiss Mad­ison fau­cets, good, bad or indifferent, we would like to hear about it, so please contact us or post a comment below.