Vigo Faucets Review & Rating Updated: July 27, 2026
135 W 25th St., 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10001
866-591-7792
support@vigoindustries.com
Law Requirements
Warranty Footnotes1. Although the warranty is captioned as a "Lifetime" warranty, its actual term is 5 years..2. The warranty contains illegal provisions and is missing all of the quaifying language required by the U.S. Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (15 U.S.C. §2301).
- Download/Read/Print the annotated Vigo faucet warranty.
- Learn more about faucet warranties.
- Read our Model Limited Lifetime Faucet Warranty
- Learn how to enforce a product warranty at The Warranty Game: Enforcing Your Product Warranty
This Company In Brief
Vigo Industries is an importer of Chinese-made bathroom and kitchen sanitary wares and accessories that are branded and sold under the Vigo name. The company sources from a variety of Chinese suppliers.
Vigo sells faucets for the kitchen and bath as well as sinks, showers, and accessories to accompany its faucets.
On the plus side, the faucets are generally above average in quality, reasonably priced, widely available, and the company website provides much of the information needed for an informed faucet-buying decision.
The minus side includes a poorly written, sub-par faucet warranty that is misleading in some of its language and does not comply with U.S. warranty law; inadequate post-sale customer support; and a Better Business Bureau rating of F,
the BBB's lowest possible score.
Vigo complies with faucet registration and certification requirements. Its compliance is not perfect, however. A half-dozen or so of its faucets are missing one or more certifications.
The Company
Founded by Leonid (Lenny) Valdberg and Felix Machhlis in 2009 as a New Jersey limited liability company, Vigo Industries LLC is an importer of Chinese-made bathroom and kitchen plumbing products, bathroom furniture, and accessories that are branded and sold under the Vigo name.
The company still maintains the Edison site as a warehouse and distribution center and another at 9D Brick Plant Rd., South River, N.J. It reportedly has a similar facility in Riverside, CA, but this address has not been confirmed.
Its main product lines are shower assemblies, sinks, and bathroom furniture, primarily vanities. Faucets for kitchens and bathrooms are also available.
They are often sold in sets that include sinks and vanities.
Vigo's Faucet Manufacturers
Vigo sources faucets from a variety of suppliers and maintains an office in Foshan, China, that handles purchasing and export.
Our information gleaned from customs and certification records indicates that Vigo's faucet suppliers are all Chinese companies.
These include:
- YingAo Kitchen Utensils Co., Ltd., a manufacturer established in 2006, specializes in the design and production of stainless steel kitchen faucets, sinks, cabinets, and cabinet accessories. It is . It sells faucets under its own Yingao brand and manufactures faucets for
- Kaiping Promise Plumbing Co., Ltd., is an manufacturer founded in 2010, specializing in kitchen and bathroom faucets and other sanitary fittings primarily for the export market. The company also manufactures faucets sold by
- Weixiang Sanitary Ware Co., Ltd., located in Kaiping City, is a Chinese manufacturer and exporter of mid-priced faucets and other sanitary wares. It was established in 1991 as part of the Weiqiang Group. It is and has received international awards for its product designs, including a coveted iF design award in 2018 for its Note shower mixer.
- Weixiang is a long-time supplier of components to Brasstech, Inc., a Masco company that manufacturers upscale
- Jiangmen WoLiHua Sanitary Ware Manufacturer Co. Ltd., trading as Voriva®, is an manufacturer based in Guangdong, China, that manufactures faucets and other sanitary wares primarily for export. Vigo appears to be its sole North American customer. WoLiHua company has its own R&D and design team, offering one-stop product development services.
These may not be the Vigo's only faucet suppliers.
The company imports products through its buying office in Foshan and through brokers like Foshan Chen Anderson Import & Export Co. Ltd. rather than directly from the Chinese manufacturers, which makes it difficult to determine the actual manufacturer.
Vigo Faucet Designs
Most of Vigo's faucets are very modern, contemporary styles. A few can be reasonably viewed as transitional, but none are traditional in design.
Vigo claims that it designs its faucets "in New York." For almost all of its faucets, however, that claim is not true.
We found no design patents for Vigo faucets. Design patents are how original designs are protected from design pirates.
Original Designs
Just two Vigo faucets that may be original designs, and these are nearly a decade old.
The Niko faucet, as part of the Niko/Peony lavatory set, received an Architizer A+ award in 2018 as one of the "28 Game-Changing Products, as Chosen by Architects."
We don't see much creative originality in this faucet.
Its monoblock waterfall style has been around for decades and is very much a staple in the catalogs of most Chinese faucet manufacturers.
Most likely it is the pairing of the faucet with the intriguing Peony sink that caught the eye of the judges, not the faucet itself. [1]
In any event, the very great majority of Vigo's faucets are straight out of each manufacturer's and are neither designed by Vigo nor manufactured exclusively for Vigo.
Many of the same faucets are sold by other importers in the U.S. and Canada, and Vigo's known faucet manufacturers sell identical faucets under various proprietary brand names in other parts of the world.
Customization
What Vigo may do to create more or less "unique" faucets is more accurately called customization.
Almost any faucet manufacturer offers customization options. The Chinese, especially, a very good at it.
Faucet components such as spouts and handles are often interchangeable on a basic faucet, so a great many different configurations can be created without altering the mechanics of the faucet.
It is simply a matter of swapping components, sort of like ordering in a Chinese restaurant: pick a basic faucet from Column A, a spout from Column B, a handle from Column C, then select a spray head from Column D to create a distinctive faucet from the basic design.
Customization allows manufacturers to offer their wholesale customers basic faucets in many different guises so they all don't end up competing to sell the exact same faucet.
Vigo Faucet Finishes
Vigo faucets are available in six finishes: Antique Rubbed Bronze, Brushed Nickel, Chrome, Graphite Black, Matte Brushed Gold, and Stainless Steel.
According to a company representative, Antique Rubbed Bronze is on its way out. The Niko vessel faucet is the only faucet shown on the company website that is still available in that finish.
Chrome is . That process is the usual method of creating those particular finishes. According to a company source, Antique Rubbed Bronze is also electroplated.
Matte Black and Graphite Black are painted finishes produced in a process called electrodeposition.
Brushed Nickel is normally an electroplated finish. However, a company source has identified the finish as produced through (PVD). Matte Brushed Gold and Stainless Steel are also PVD finishes.
Electroplating
Vigo calls its electroplating "FinishPlated™ Technology" and describes it as a multi-layer (or seven-layer) finish that "resists fingerprints."
Vigo does not claim that its electroplating produces finishes that are more fingerprint-resistant that other electroplated finishes. All such finishes resist fingerprints to some degree, so its claim of fingerprint resistance is semantically null and largely meaningless.
Coatings exist that can substantially reduce fingerprints. These are called coatings, but Vigo does not claim to use any of these coatings on its faucets.
Water Spots
More bothersome to most faucet owners than fingerprints are water spots. Coatings that reduce these are called coatings. Companies like use them to protect their faucets. Some combine them with oleophobic coatings. There is no evidence that Vigo finishes are hydrophobic.The process involves immersing faucet components and the metal to be used as plating in an acid bath, then applying an electrical charge to both objects to draw metallic ions from the plating metal to the components.
Usually, multiple coats are applied, including one or more undercoats (but rarely as many as five or six) followed by two or more coats of the finish metal.
The undercoats are required because many plating metals do not bond well to brass. An undercoat of copper or nickel is applied as a primer. They bond well to brass, and a finish coat, such as chrome, bonds well to copper and nickel.
Electrophoretic Painting
Electrophoretic painting, or e-coating, is a galvanic process similar to electroplating except the plating material is a paint or resin rather than a metal.
According to a company source, it is the process used to produce Vigo's Matte Black finish.
Finish Durability
Before you buy any Vigo faucet, contact customer support to find out the process used to create the finish. The process largely determines the finish's durability and how much care and maintenance it requires.
Some finishes are more durable than others.
- Electroplating 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.)
- Physical Vapor Deposition (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.
- Painted Finishes such as electrophoretic and powder coatings are not as durable as metal finishes simply because paint is not as hard or as scratch-resistant as most metals. Most painted coatings are considered not better than semi-durable with about the same scratch resistance as the finish on your car. The exception is Thin File Ceramic (TFC), which is nearly as robust as PVD finishes.
To produce the finish, a faucet component is submerged in a water-based paint bath. An electrical current draws the paint to the component, depositing it uniformly in a thin layer (10 to 30 microns).
The resulting finish is smooth and even. The process ensures that the paint reaches every part of the component, even into the smallest hard-to-reach nook or cranny, unlike a sprayed finish like powder coating [2] that can miss some of the fine detail in a faucet design.
E-coating produces a strong bond that protects the underlying metal from tarnish. It is reasonably durable, but not as durable as electroplated metals and not nearly as scratch-resistant as a PVD finish.
Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD)
Physical vapor deposition is used to produce Vigo's Stainless Steel and Matte Brushed Gold finishes.
It is one of the latest space-age finishing technologies, rapidly replacing electroplating as the finish of choice, and is a particular favorite of Chinese faucet manufacturers, many of whom use nothing but PVD processes to create their finishes.
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 inside nuclear reactors, where a very tough finish is absolutely necessary, and by NASA to protect rocket engine components.
Today, PVD technology is everywhere, and the machinery required is getting smaller, faster, and cheaper all the time.
To create a PVD coating, a faucet is first undercoated using electroplating, typically with a nickel compound, then polished and thoroughly cleaned.
The PVD finish coat is applied in a sealed chamber loaded with faucet components. All the air is removed and replaced with a carefully calculated mix of inert and reactive gases.
A rod of the metal to be used for the finish material is heated to a temperature so high that it dissolves into individual atoms. Typical plating metals are nitrides of zirconium and titanium, both non-reactive metals that do not tarnish, corrode, or rust, making them ideal finish materials.
The atoms mix with the various reactive gases to get the desired color and finish effects and are then deposited in a very thin but very hard film—2 to 5 thick—on the faucet components.
Different finish colors and effects are possible by using different metals and varying the mix of gases.
To watch a PVD sputter machine in action, click here, and prepare for loud noises.
Vigo's Matte Brushed Gold, for example, could be created using a titanium alloy as the coating metal with nitrogen gas (perhaps with a whiff of methane for slightly warmer brass color). [3]
Titanium is a dull gray metal in its natural state, but combining it with nitrogen in a PVD chamber creates a convincing brass-look finish. Unlike true brass, titanium never tarnishes. It will stay the same gleaming gold color for its lifetime.
A stainless steel "finish" is usually just the stainless steel material of the faucet itself, buffed and sanded to produce a pleasing brushed effect.
Vigo's PVD stainless-steel-look-alike finish has some advantages over native stainless steel. It is less likely to show fingerprints than actual stainless steel, and it is much harder and more scratch-resistant.
Carbon Fiber Skinning
Some Vigo faucets are available in a carbon fiber finish that the company calls cFiber©. This is not a coating that resembles carbon fiber but a true carbon fiber wrap.
Carbon fiber is a strong, lightweight material composed of thin strands of carbon atoms bonded together in a crystalline structure. It is typically woven into a fabric and mixed with epoxy resin to create an exceptionally durable and rigid composite used in aerospace (fuselages, wings), automotive (chassis, body panels), and wind energy (turbine blades) sectors, as well as in civil engineering for reinforcing bridges and buildings.
A carbon fiber coating is essentially carbon fiber fabric glued to a faucet in a process called "skinning" (as in "applying a skin").
A two-part epoxy resin is applied to the faucet. Flexible weave carbon fiber is laid onto the wet resin, vacuum-bagged for a tight fit, and then top-coated with clear epoxy. Any excess fabric is trimmed away and discarded.
Carbon fiber is a rare finish in the faucet world. As of the date of this report, only Vigo and sell faucets in a carbon fiber finish. The facets from California Faucets are considerably more costly.
The Vigo Website
The Vigo website is well-organized, with a product search function that is easy to use and fairly accurate. When it errs, it errs on the side of displaying more than you want rather than less.
Site navigation has a learning curve, however.
Very frequently a screen image of a product that blocks the entire screen appears with no clue how to proceed.
By trial and error, we learned to scroll down below the massive image to find the next menu. If the screen image turns black, however, there is no place to go. This appears to be a bug that may have been fixed when you access the site.
The information provided about each faucet includes its certifications, finishes, flow rate, ADA compliance, and dimensions.
It does not disclose the process used to produce the finishes, the source of the ceramic valve cartridge used in the faucet, or the source and type of aerator or faucet spray mechanism, all of which are needed for an informed buying decision.
How to Clean a Ceramic Valve Cartridge
If your faucet starts to drip after several years, the problem is most likely in the valve cartridge.
The cartridge is probably not defective. It is just clogged up with mineral deposits accumulated over the years from hard water.
The two ceramic discs that shut the water off no longer mesh perfectly, allowing a few drops of water to slip through.
To return it to full functionality, removing the limescale deposits is all that is required.
Here is how that can be done:
- Remove the cartridge following the instructions in your faucet manual. (If you did not keep the instructions, go to YouTube for any of several videos on how to remove a cartridge.)
- Soak the cartridge for up to 30 minutes in a solution of 50% household vinegar and 50% water.
- While you are waiting, take a toothbrush soaked in the vinegar/water mixture and clean the cavity in the faucet that holds the cartridge. Wipe it dry with a clean cloth.
- Rinse the cartridge thoroughly in clean, cold water.
- Lubricate the O-ring(s) and rubber washers, if any, with silicon plumber's grease.
- Reinstall the cartridge.
If the mineral build-up is substantial, you may have to do this more than once.
View a video by Vigo on how to remove and replace a mixing cartridge in a single-handle kitchen faucet at how to replace a ceramic cartridge.
View a good video by Fluid on how to clean a ceramic cartridge.
Of partricular importance are the materials from which the pull-down and pull-out sprays on kitchen faucets are made. The faucets we acquired for examination all had plastic sprays. Since we did not acquire every faucet, we cannot exclude the possibility that at least some kitchen sprays are metal, but they would be unusual in a Chinese-made mid-priced faucet line.
Plastic spray heads (or "wands" in faucet-speak) are not as durable as metal wands and are more likely to fail. But metal wands are considerably more expensive.
Installation instructions are downloadable in .pdf format, and these usually include a dimensioned drawing—useful for determining whether a faucet will fit your bathroom or kitchen—and a troubleshooting guide, but no parts diagram, which would be very helpful if something on the faucet breaks.
Some information on the website is misleading. For example, the written warranty term is always identified as a lifetime warranty rather than its actual term of five years. Faucet valve cartridges are described as "brass" when, in fact, the cartridges in our test faucets were uniformly plastic.
We grade the site's navigation as "B-" and the information provided about faucet products a "D+." ("D+" may not seem like a very good grade, but it is better than the "F" scored by most faucet company websites. The current highest score is a "C.")
Vigo Faucet Valve Cartridges
Vigo does not disclose the source of its ceramic faucet valve cartridges.
They are probably not made by companies that produce what are generally recognized in the industry as the best ceramic valves.
As a rule, companies that equip their faucets with name-brand cartridges like those made by Kerox Kft of Hungary, Flühs GmbH from Germany, or Taiwan's Geann Industrial Co., Ltd., trumpet the fact all over their websites.
Vigo identifies its faucet cartridges only as EternalSeal™ cartridges. There is no recognized brand of cartridge called EternalSeal. It is pure marketing, an in-house name that tells us nothing about the quality of the cartridges.
The cartridges are described as "brass" and "expertly tested" to prevent "leaks and dripping."
We did not find a single brass valve cartridge in the faucets we acquired for evaluation. All of the Vigo cartridges we examined and all of the cartridges shown in Vigo's illustrations are plastic, including stem valve cartridges for two-handle faucets. Better stem cartridges are usually housed in brass shells.
The 500,000 Cycle Cartridge Durability Test
Vigo vigorously promotes its valve cartridges.
It is not possible to telephone the company without getting an earful while on hold about how all of its faucet cartridges have been tested through 500,000 cycles.
Yet there is nothing special about 500,000 cycles. It is the minimum standard for certified cartridges in North America.
Every legal faucet cartridge has been life-cycle tested to 500,000 on/off cycles by an independent laboratory. [4] Some of the better valve cartridges have been tested through four and even five million cycles. [5]
Five million is noteworthy; 500,000 is ordinary, but what it does is assure you of a minimum performance without a failure for a good many years.
Buying Rule for Smart Faucet Buyers
The Faucet Cartridge
Never buy a faucet unless you know who made the valve cartridge.
Its valve is the most critical part of a faucet. It is the component that controls water flow. Without a working valve, a faucet is no longer a faucet.
Companies that use good-quality valve cartridges in their faucets usually disclose the cartridge source on their websites. Those that don't will happily identify the cartridge in a call to customer service.
If the company declines to disclose the sources of its cartridges (because it is a "trade secret"), you can confidently assume it is not one of the better brands.
Replacement Cartridges: If a company no longer stocks the cartridge for your very old faucet, don't panic. The company's cartridges are universal-fit cartridges that are probably available from one of the replacement parts sellers such as Faucet Parts Plus or Chicago Faucet Shoppe.
For more information about faucet valves and cartridges and the companies that make cartridges that are known to be reliable, see Faucet Valves & Cartridges.
The Cartridge "Burst" Test
All certified faucet cartridges have also passed The Hydrostatic Burst Pressure Text.
This test determines the cartridge's resistance to water pressure surges that are common in household water systems. Every time you abruptly turn off a faucet, a wave of high pressure surges through your pipes.
To test resistance to surges, water pressure ten times greater than normal household pressure is applied to the cartridge for one minute to see if it will deform or leak.
You will never experience ten times normal household water pressure in real life. That amount of pressure exceeds safe structural limits by more than 700% and would cause catastrophic pipe ruptures in your walls, floor, and ceilings.
If it does, it fails and is not certified for use in North America.
A "Lifetime" Warranty?
Vigo trumpets its faucet warranty as "comprehensive" and the "Best Warranty on the Market for Bathroom & Kitchen Fixtures."
We found it considerably less than comprehensive, not even approaching the best warranty on the market. After careful analysis it turns out to be a warranty that does not actually provide warranty coverage.
We call these "Barnum Warranties" after the famous showman and huckster, Phineas Taylor ("P. T.") Barnum. They promise much at the top of the warranty, then take it all away, line by line, in succeeding paragraphs.
The warranty is poorly drafted, almost certainly not by a lawyer.
In parts it is misleading; in others it is illegal. It repeatedly violates the federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (15 U.S.C. §2301), the federal law that dictates the form and content of consumer warranties in the U.S.
The Golden Rule of Warranties
The Golden Rule of Warranties is the following:
"The longer and stronger a faucet's warranty, the more confidence the company has in the durability and longevity of its faucets.The shorter and weaker a faucet's warranty, the less confidence the company has in the durability and longevity of its faucets."
A warranty discloses management's true opinion about the quality of its faucets.
The company may promote its faucets as the greatest things since water was invented, but to find out what management really thinks, look to the company's warranty.
A warranty requires a company to stand behind its faucets with its own dollars.
How long management is willing to risk the company's cash is the best indication of how long it truly expects its faucet to last without developing problems.
From Vigo's warranty, we surmise that company management expects its faucets to last about five years.
Something to keep in mind if you are considering a Vigo product.
A lawyer, even a very new lawyer just out of school, would not have made so many elementary drafting errors.
Warranty Misdirects and Deceptions
Magnuson-Moss prohibits deceptive warranties – warranties that contain false promises, misleading language, or hidden conditions.
One of the core purposes of the law, according to its legislative history, was to eliminate any possible deception in consumer warranties, a serious problem before the law was passed over a half century ago.
Penalties for deception, at minimum, will include civil monetary fines and mandatory payment of a consumer's legal fees. Many states and provinces award triple damages for willful deception.
Of even more consequence, deception exposes the company to prosecution under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act or the Canadian Competition Act and the deceptive trade practices acts of most states and Canadian provinces.
The Caption
The warranty's deceptions start with its very first line, the caption, which boldly identifies the warranty as a "Limited Lifetime Warranty."
The actual warranty period, however, is not even close to a lifetime.
Here is the provision that establishes the duration of the warranty, word for word:
"VIGO warrants all faucet parts and the finish of the Product to be free from defects in workmanship and materials under normal household use for the period of FIVE (5) years from the initial date of purchase by the purchaser/end-user, contractors, or builder from VIGO or an authorized VIGO Dealer." (Emphasis supplied)
Here, on the Great Plains, we call this a 5-year warranty. We suspect that in every other part of North America, it is also a 5-year warranty.
Other than in the caption, the word "lifetime" does not appear anywhere in the warranty.
Deceptive Disclaimer of State Warranty Law
The warranty attempts to exclude Vigo faucets from coverage by state law warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. Here is that provision (all in caps so you won't miss it):
"EXCEPT AS OTHERWISE PROVIDED ABOVE, VIGO MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURCHASE [sic] OR COMPLIANCE WITH ANY CODE."
What Are Consequential & Incidental Damages?
There are three problems with this provision.
The first is that the word "PURCHASE" should be "PURPOSE."
The second is that it is illegal.
A company offering a written warranty is absolutely forbidden by Magnuson-Moss from excluding coverage by state-law implied warranties.
A company's written warranty is intended to supplement state law warranties, not replace them. Any attempt to cancel, deny, exclude, or disclaim state-law warranty coverage is simply ignored as if the disclaimer does not exist. (15 U.S.C. § 2308(a))
"… COMPLIANCE WITH ANY CODE." None of the lawyers we consulted had any idea what this means, if it means anything at all. No one, including Vigo, can unilaterally declare themselves exempt from compliance with laws or regulations.
The third problem is that it is deceptive in that it is a …
"&hellip statement, representation, or omission … that has the tendency, capacity, or likelihood to mislead or deceive a reasonable consumer.
The provision would almost certainly lead a "reasonable consumer to reasonably believe" that a defective faucet would be excluded from state law warranty coverage. It is, in other words, the very definition of deception.
We don't know if the company is being deliberately deceptive or is simply ignorant. Perhaps the writer saw the language in some other warranty and copied it, unaware that it is completely forbidden.
Understanding Finish Warranties
A finish warranty does not protect against anything that can go wrong with a faucet finish. It protects against defects caused by faulty materials or errors in the finishing process, generally subsumed under the rubric "manufacturing defects."
Delaminating, peeling, blistering, and spalling are the usual manufacturing defects. These are extremely rare and rarely leave the factory. Most problems are caused by overzealous cleaning and ordinary wear and tear, neither of which is covered by a finish warranty.
If it peels, the company pays, but if you scratch it or it turns a funny color after you clean with Wham-X All-Purpose Miracle Cleaner - well, you should have been more careful.
But intentional or accidental, it makes no difference. It is still misleading.
Under Magnuson-Moss, deliberate deception is not required to incur liability. It is sufficient that the company has not taken reasonable care "to make the warranty not misleading." (15 U.S. Code § 2310(c)(2))
The very presence of the provision in this warranty, however, evidences a lack of reasonable care.
Omitted Mandatory Disclosure – A Deceptive Practice
Magnuson-Moss requires every consumer warranty to include the following disclosure:
"This warranty gives you specific legal rights, and you may also have other rights which vary from state to state."
Without that statement, a consumer warranty is not a legal warranty in the U.S. (16 CFR § 701.3(a)(9)). But that is not the more serious consequence.
The Federal Trade Commission views the omission of this statement as a deceptive business practice, exposing the company to regulatory penalties under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act.
Deceptive Disclaimers of Liability
The Vigo warranty provides as follows:
"VIGO is not liable for personal injuries or deaths to any persons or for any direct, special, incidental, or consequential damage, loss of time, loss of profits, inconvenience, incidental expenses, labor or material charges, or other costs resulting from the use of the Product or equipment pertaining to the application of the present warranty, or resulting from the removal or replacement of any product or element or part covered by this warranty." (Emphasis supplied)
Buying Rule for
Smart Faucet Buyers:
Warranty
Never buy a faucet unless you have carefully read and understand the faucet's warranty. It tells you more than the company wants you to know about management's true opinion of the durability and life expectancy of the faucet it sells.
Learn how to interpret faucet warranties at Faucet Basics, Part 6: Understanding faucet Warranties.
Learn how to enforce your warranty with step-by-step instructions at The Warranty Game: Enforcing Your Product Warranty.
Model Lifetime Warranty: For an example of a warranty that avoids Vigo's drafting problems and complies with the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, download and read our Model Limited Lifetime Warranty.
This verbose and inelegant paragraph is certainly not written in the "simple and readily understood" language required by Magnuson-Moss (16 CFR § 701.3(a)). It requires a very careful parsing to even begin to understand.
We have seen this paragraph and others very much like it in various faucet warranties. It sounds very legal-ish and imposing, so unschooled warranty writers copy it, possibly unaware that almost everything in it is either illegal, deceptive, or both.
Liability for Personal Injuries and Death
Death or injury by faucet seems highly implausable. It is, indeed, rare but not impossible. Reported instances include scalding, poisoning by lead and other toxic substances, and slip-and-fall accidents caused by leaks.
State and provincial law in North America specifically prohibit any wording in a warranty that seeks to limit a company's responsibility for physical harm caused by a consumer product. (See e.g., UCC § 2-719(3))
Courts will strike any such provision on sight as against public policy.
Liability for Special, Incidental, or Consequential Damage
The paragraph attempts to exclude any liability for consequential and incidental damages, also called "special" or "indirect: damages.
Vigo is allowed to exclude consequential and incidental damages from warranty coverage, but it has to do it in the right way by adding this required disclosure to its warranty:
"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." (16 CFR § 701.3(a)(8))
Without this language, the attempted exclusion is void and without effect. Moreover, the language becomes deceptive since it can lead a reasonable person to conclude that remedies for these types of damages are not available.
Liability for Direct Damages
Now we come to the language that effectively turns the entire warranty into a deception called an "Illusory Warranty."
The paragraph explicitly excludes any liability for "direct damages." These are the costs of fixing a defective faucet.
The effect of the exclusion is that, while Vigo guarantees a faucet for five years, the company is not required to fix it if it fails because it has declared itself exempt from any obligation for the costs to repair the defect.
So, is this even a warranty?
It says it's a warranty. It certainly looks like a warranty. But, in the end, it promises nothing, and that makes it an illusory warranty. Illusory warranties are considered fraud.
The Vigo Warranty, in Conclusion
So, what do you think? Is this the "Best Warranty on the Market for Bathroom & Kitchen Fixtures," or is it a document pretending to be a warranty?
We lean toward the latter.
Vigo's warranty is make-believe, a document pretending to be a warranty. a wholesale deception so overwhelmingly defective that if it ever reaches a courtroom, the company will have a serious problem keeping the judge from laughing out loud.
Is it intentional deception? Prohably not.
it is more likely the product of an foolish attempt to save a few dolloars by not hiring a competent lawyer to write a legal warranty.
Every Vigo faucet arrives with an imposing card labeled
"IMPORTANT"
that instructs you to register your product in order to "activate your warranty."
The implication is that unless you activate it, your warranty is not in effect. Thiss is yet another bit of misdirection.
Registration has two legitimate purposes. It proves ownership in case you lose your receipt and it facilitates notification of a recall.
But it does not "activate" your warranty. The warranty was activated the very second you purchased the faucet.
The federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (15 U.S.C. §2301) specifically forbids companies from requiring product or warranty registration as a condition of providing warranty services. (16 CFR § 700.7)
Companies that would not dream of letting a junior VP write a simple sales contract somehow feel that this same VP is fully qualified to write one of the most complex documents in the legal lexicon. The Vigo warranty isone unfortunate result of such parsimony.
Vigo would do itself a very great favor by having an actual lawyer rewrite its warranty as soon as possible.
For an example of a lifetime faucet warranty that avoids the problems of the Vigo warranty and complies with the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, read the Model Limited Lifetime Faucet Warranty.
None of this should suggest that Vigo does not actually handle warranty claims. It does, and many quite satisfactorily.
Warranty analysis does not look at what the company actually does to resolve warranty issues, but at what it must do or, in this case, what it is permitted not to do under the terms of its warranty.
The Vigo warranty does not require it to do anything. That is a problem, and the problem does no go away merely because many warranty claims are resolved. The exposure to legal liability still exists.
Replacement Parts
Traditional faucet companies like keep an ample stock of replacement parts for the faucets they sell, even years after a faucet has been discontinued.
It is not uncommon for a company like Delta to still have parts on hand for faucets they have not sold since JFK was president.
Stocking, inventorying, storing, and distributing such a deep well of spare parts is, however, an expensive undertaking and one that small companies like Vigo can often ill afford.
They may keep a small stock of basic components like valve cartridges, aerators, hoses, or faucet sprays on hand, but not much beyond these few. Vigo fits this model. It keeps a small stock of common replacement parts such as cartridges, hoses, and sprayers but not much else.
If a part that is not in stock is needed to resolve a warranty claim, the usual course is to scavenge the part from a faucet still in inventory.
This usually works for faucets still being sold, but not for discontinued faucets. Some companies keep a limited supply of parts for a time, but for most, the limit is two or three years.
In consequence, the chances that Vigo will have a replacement part available for a faucet after a decade or so are remote.
Reports that Vigo has failed to provide replacement parts are fairly frequent as are instances of the company denying warranty claims for lack of parts.
A Typical BBB Complaint
I bought a kitchen faucet from (redacted). After instalation we noticed the plastic retainer for the detachable sprayer head was defective, which would not allow the head to fully retract into the faucet.
I have been in contact with Vigo since the day it was installed with no resolution.
They said they do not stock the plastic part and will not order a replacement from their China supplier and my only hope is if they get a return faucet so they can take the part from the returned product.
This has been going on for over 6 months with no resolution. I don't want to pay a plumber to remove the faucet and cost me even more money now. Just very poor customer service and it appears they don't care about their customers after the product is purchased.
After-Sale Customer and Warranty Service
Pre-sale customer service is good. Agents are well versed in the technical details of the company's faucets and able to answer most common customer inquiries.
Post-sale service is not as competent.
Vigo has had problems with providing adequate post-sale customer support ever since its founding, resulting in an unusually high number of complaints to the Better Business Bureau.
The situation appeared to be turning around a few years ago under the direction of a new technical support manager. The company applied for and received accreditation by the BBB and brought its rating up from an F to an "A-" on a scale of "A+" to "F," quite an astounding reversal.
But then it all fell apart. Its accreditation lapsed, and its BBB rating took a nosedive. Vigo is back down to an F due to a large number of unanswered and unresolved complaints from customers.
Typical complaints about Vigo's after-sales service include delays in responding to claims, demands for excessive documentation, and claim denials based on discontinued parts or policy changes.
The BBB estimates that fewer than 1% of disatisfied customers file a formal BBB complaint. That level of escallation suggests that nearly 2,000 customer issues received by Vigo over the past three years were unresolved. For a small business, that is a lot of customer dissatisfaction and many lost chances for good word-of-mouth advertising.
The problem is not with Vigo's customer service agents. They try to be as helpful as they can be. The problem is systemic.
Agents cannot provide replacement parts if there are no replacement parts to provide. They cannot tell you the source of Vigo's faucet valve cartridges if they have not been told the source. Agents who have been informed that the Vigo faucet warranty is the best in the business repeat that claim, unaware that it is simply not true.
Agents can be better trained and better informed. But the real problem is the lack of a forthright approach to customer relations. Customer satisfaction is simply not a priority at Vigo. Without a najor attitude change, any curative measures are likely doomed to fail.
We grade the company's after-sales support as "very unsatisfactory," our lowest rating. [6]
To learn how to enforce your warranty, go to The Warranty Game: Enforcing Your Product Warranty.
Testing & Certification
Not every Vigo faucet is certified. Most are, but a few are not.
Federal law is pretty clear about uncertified faucets. They cannot be sold until they are certified by an independent laboratory.
If you are interested in a Vigo faucet, make certain it is one of the models that has been tested and certified to all three required standards and isted on all three certificates. If it is missing from even one certificate, it is not a legal faucet.
Below are the links to the latest listing certificates for Vigo Industries.
- Plumbing Fixture Fittings: Certificate 8022: Basic stands of performance, durability, and ease of repair. .
- Lead-Free Plumbing Products: Certificate 8164: Conformity to North American lead-free standard of less than 0.25% lead in the waterway of a faucet.
- Drinking Water System Components - Health Effects: Certificate N-8023: Conformation that water flowing from a faucet contains no harmful pathogens, chemicals, or minerals in amounts above established safe levelss.
Only faucets certified to comply with all three North American standards may be legally used in a drinking water system in any state or territory of the U.S. or any Canadian province. Legal penalties in some jurisdictions may include fines and jail time.
If your choice is a bathroom faucet and you want to see if it qualifies under the WaterSense standards, go to the WaterSense Product Search, click on "Bathroom Sink Faucets/Accessories" and in the Keyword slot on the left side of the screen, enter "Vigo."
Required Registrations and Certifications
CalGreen®: Most Vigo faucets comply with the energy-saving requirements of the California Green Building Standards Code. But we have found no independent testing and verification. For a faucet to display the CalGreen label, it must have been tested for compliance with CALGreen Chapter 4, Residential Mandatory Measures, Section 4.303 Indoor Water Use, and certified by an independent testing organization.
Where to Buy
Vigo sells at Ferguson plumbing supply showrooms throughout the U.S.
Its principal outlets, however, are online. These include big-box home improvement websites, like Home Depot, Lowe's, and Menard's, as well as general merchandise outlets such as Amazon, Costco, Overstock, and Wayfair.
The faucets can also be found at online sellers specializing in building and plumbing products, including Ferguson Home (formerly Build.com), eFaucets.com (another Ferguson online outlet), Decor Planet, Home Hardware, Houzz.com, Kitchen & Bath Authority, and KitchenSource.com.
In Canada, the faucets are available at Amazon.ca and Rona stores.
Minimum Advertised Pricing
For almost any Vigo faucet, every retailer displays exactly the same selling price.
The identical pricing is no accident.
No matter where you buy a Vigo faucet, do not expect a deep discount.
Vigo enforces a Minimum Advertised Pricing (MAP) policy, a form of price fixing that has been legal since the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc.
Under its MAP policy, Vigo sets the minimum price at which a U.S. retailer can advertise Vigo faucets.
The policy has a legitimate purpose. It protects brick-and-mortar showrooms from steep discounting by online sellers that enjoy a much lower overhead. (Most likely, Ferguson requires the policy as a condition of its agreeing to sell Vigo products in its showrooms.)
See Price in Cart
"See price in cart" is a common online retail practice to get around a MAP restriction.
A product's price is not displayed on the product page. Customers must add the item to their shopping carts to see the price.
A retailer can't publish a lower price, even on its website, but it can sell at a lower price. It just has to be a little cagey about it.
MAP is not rigid. It allows flexibility in the final sale price.
Retailers will often discount below the minimum price when a customer buys a whole bathroom suite, for example. It is also customary to offer a discount to the building trades, especially regular customers. But the retailer cannot advertise the discounted price to the general public.
Since selling below the minimum price is usually more trouble than it's worth, most retailers take the easy route and sell at the minimum allowed price, hence the price identity among all or almost all online retailers of Vigo faucets.
Legal Actions
The California Energy Commission brought an action against Vigo Industries, LLC, for illegally selling unapproved showerhead panels in California from July 2015 to February 2018. The company paid a penalty of $86,287 to settle the suit in 2019.
In Kraus USA, Inc. v. Magarik et al., Vigo Industries and Leonid Valdberg, individually, among others, were sued by a competitor, for colluding with a former Kraus employee to misappropriate trade secrets and divert funds from the company for a private venture.
The case was settled in 2021 with no admission of wrongdoing by any party.
Comparable Faucets
Chinese-made faucets comparable to Vigo with a better warranty and often better post-sale customer service, but not necessarily in the same price or quality range, include:
In Conclusion
Vigo sells well-made faucets for the right price, well within the "golden zone" for mid-priced faucets.
Most of its faucets are fully certified and, therefore, safe to buy and install. We found just a few faucets missing one or more certifications.
If the company offered a reasonable (and legal) warranty and adequate post-sale services, it would almost certainly score higher than its current rating of Average to Above Average.
But it is precisely after the sale that Vigo falls apart.
Its warranty would be laughable if it weren't so illegal. Its post-sale product support is very poor and has been very poor for most of the years the company has existed.
Even with the company's favorable pricing, most members of our rating panel would not buy the faucets, specifically citing the the lack of a legal written warranty and deficient post-sale support as their reasons for avoiding the company's products.
Weighing its warranty and post-sale services against its pricing amd quality, its price-to-value rateing scores at merely "fair."
Vigo knows how to select, price, and market its faucet products. Now it needs to learn how to take care of its faucet customers.
Continuing Research
We are continuing to research the company. If you have experience with Vigo faucets, good, bad, or indifferent, we would like to hear about it, so please email us at starcraftreviews@yahoo.com or post a comment below.
Please note: we do not answer questions posted in the comments unless they are of general interest. If you have a specific question, email us at starcraftreviews@yahoo.com.