What Warranty Claims Cost Window and Door Manufacturers, According to Their Own Filings

For the two public window and door manufacturers whose filings we checked, warranty costs tens of millions of dollars a year. PGT Innovations recorded warranty expense at an average of 2.4% of sales in 2023, up from 2.1% in 2022 and 2.0% in 2021. JELD-WEN paid $31.5 million in warranty claims in 2024, $30.8 million in 2023 and $29.8 million in 2022.

The more useful finding is where the money goes. In PGT Innovations’ 2023 filing, the cost of servicing warranty claims, including its service department personnel, was $32.8 million. Warranty expense for product issued was $3.2 million. Most of the cost of a warranty claim is the work of getting it resolved at the home.

Public companies report warranty because it is an estimated liability: the cost is booked when the product is sold and adjusted as claims come in. JELD-WEN’s Form 10-K for 2024 describes it this way: “Estimated warranty costs based on historical experience are recorded as a provision at the time of sale. The provision is adjusted periodically to reflect actual experience.” Its warranty terms “range from one year to lifetime on certain window and door components.” Its warranty liability stood at $47.3 million at the end of 2024, against net revenues of $3.78 billion for the year.

PGT Innovations’ Form 10-K for 2023 says its warranty periods “generally range from 1 to 10 years,” with lifetime coverage on a limited number of components, and that the majority of products carry component warranties of 1 to 3 years. It charged $36.3 million to warranty expense in 2023 and settled $36.1 million of claims.

Two companies are not an industry average, and the figures are not comparable line for line: one reports expense as a share of sales, the other reports claim payments and a liability balance. What they share is scale. For a manufacturer of any size, warranty is a recurring operating cost, not an occasional one.

A replacement glass unit, balance or weatherstrip is usually the cheap part of a claim. The cost sits in everything around it: validating the claim, reaching the homeowner, scheduling, sending someone qualified to the address, often a second trip once a part arrives, and recording what was done.

UTS ServicePros’ own work order history shows how much of that is unavoidable. Of the work orders with a written request, 29% asked for an inspection or diagnosis before any repair. From 2008 to 2023, 54% of work orders needed a manufacturer parts order, and when a part had to ship, the homeowner waited a median of 12 days for it. That wait is the manufacturer’s parts lead time, not field service time, but every day of it is a day the homeowner is waiting on the brand.

PGT Innovations’ filing adds a caution in the other direction. It attributes part of its lower 2022 warranty rate to “a decrease in the use of higher-cost contract labor.” Outsourcing field work is not automatically cheaper. What matters is what each visit costs, how many visits a claim takes, and whether the first visit produces enough information to close it.

A manufacturer can carry the field side of warranty itself, with employed technicians, or contract it to a third-party network. The trade-offs are structural. Employed technicians are a fixed cost wherever claims are sparse. Under the doctrine of respondeat superior, an employer is generally liable for an employee’s wrongful acts within the scope of employment, and the doctrine applies to employees but not to independent contractors. And records are only as consistent as each team that keeps them.

UTS ServicePros is the third-party option. A manufacturer sends a service request; UTS validates it, schedules with the homeowner, and assigns an independent contractor matched by proximity, performance record and qualification for the product. Contractors run their own insured businesses, work under signed indemnity agreements naming UTS and the manufacturer, and cannot close a job until its photographs, diagnostic notes and homeowner sign-off are in. A Territory Manager reviews the file before it closes, and the manufacturer receives a time-stamped PDF of the visit.

The standing service area is the lower 48 states and western Canada. How coverage and contractor assignment work, and what the work orders show about which components fail.