Vigo Faucets: Best In-Depth Independent Review (2024)

Summary

This Company In Brief

Vigo Industries is an importer of Chinese-made bathroom and kitchen products that are branded and sold under the Vigo name. The company offers faucets for the kitchen and bath, and sinks and accessories to coordinate with its faucets. Vigo sources from a variety of Chinese suppliers.

The Company

Founded in 2009 by Leonid Valdberg, the company is an importer of Chinese-made bathroom and kitchen products that are branded and sold under the Vigo name.

Vigo products are contemporary and stylish but not cutting edge. Chinese faucet designs tend to be three to five years behind Western designers.

Its prices, however, are generally 30% to 50% below similar faucets from European and U.S. companies. Its low prices and contemporary styling are the primary reasons it has spread so widely across the internet in such a short time.

It quickly outgrew its original warehousing and shipping facilities and has recently moved to larger facilities in Edison, N.J.

Vigo offers faucets for the kitchen and bath, and sinks and accessories to coordinate with its faucets.

Vigo Man­u­fac­tur­ers

Vigo sources from a variety of Chinese suppliers.

In addition to faucets, it buys sinks, vanities, and accessories, so it is not always possible to determine which supplier is a source for faucets.

Our information gleaned from customs and certification records indicates that Vigo's faucet suppliers are Chinese companies including

• L.S.H. Faucet Co., a Chinese manufacturer that has only recently begun selling faucets in the U.S. under its own L.S.H. brand, primarily through the
• Kaiping Promise Plumbing Co, Ltd., an established Chinese supplier of faucets for the North American market.
• Weixiang Sanitary Ware Co., Ltd., a long-time supplier of components to Brasstech, Inc., the manufacturer of

Vigo Faucet Designs

Vigo is somewhat unique as a faucet company in that all of its faucets are single handle. The company offers no two-handle faucets for either kitchen or bath.

The faucets are, for the most part, straight out of each manufacturer's and are neither designed nor manufactured expressly for Vigo.

Many of the faucets sold by Vigo are also sold by other vendors in the U.S., and both of Vigo's known faucet manufacturers sell at least some faucets retail under their own brand names in other parts of the world.

However, According to a company source, Vigo has started working with its manufacturers to design its own exclusive faucets and about 1/3rd of the sink faucets in Vigo's lineup are now designed and manufactured just for Vigo.

Vigo Faucet Finishes

All Vigo faucets are available in bright chrome or stainless steel. Some bath faucets are finished in brushed nickel but no kitchen faucets.

Some bath faucets are offered in one of two shades of bronze but only one kitchen faucet is available in bronze. Vigo warrants all of its finishes for the lifetime of the faucet's original "owner or end-user".

Vigo Website

The Vigo website is well-organized, with intuitive navigation and a product search function that is easy to use and accurate.

The information provided about each faucet includes its certifications, finishes, flow rate, ADA compliance, and dimensions.

Installation instructions are downloadable in .pdf format, and these usually include a dimensioned scaled drawing — useful for determining whether a faucet will fit your bathroom or kitchen, and a troubleshooting guide but not a parts diagram, which would be very useful if something on the faucet breaks.

Vigo Warranty

The Vigo warranty is very oddly drafted. We doubt it was written by a lawyer. If it was, he or she needs a refresher on both legal drafting and warranty law. In places, the syntax suggests that it was written by a person for whom English is a second language.

The warranty styles itself a Limited Lifetime Warranty, but there is very little of the faucet guaranteed for a lifetime.

Cartridge valves are covered for just 5 years from the date of purchase (not the date of installation) and spray assemblies and hoses for a paltry one year. Only the non-moving "structural components" of a faucet are guaranteed for the lifetime of the original owner. These are the parts least likely to break.

The warranty does not meet the minimum requirements of the federal Mag­nu­son-Moss War­ranty Act (15 U.S.C. §2301). It is not written in the "clear and simple" language mandated by the Act.

It does not include the content that is required in consumer products warranties including a detailed description of how to make a warranty claim.

The 5-year Vigo cartridge warranty suggests that management has doubts about the longevity and durability of its faucet cartridges, perhaps the most critical component of a faucet.

The Chinese-made cartridges Vigo uses are actually fairly good cartridges, made in China by Sedal S.L.U., not the world's best but certainly not the world's worst either, and Vigo should have a little more faith in them than its warranty suggests — or use a different cartridge in its faucets.

But, if the company believes that its cartridges will last just 5 years, then you as the potential buyer have to assume that the company knows something about the cartridges that you don't, and perhaps you should be just a little wary.

We think that five years of warranty support for what is supposed to be a lifetime product is just not enough, and the company lost points in our scoring for its sub-standard cartridge warranty and its requirement that the faucets be installed by a licensed professional to escape voiding the warranty altogether.

A warranty can be a powerful marketing tool, something that companies like understand very well. But Vigo is apparently unable to grasp its potential to boost sales. The company is myopically focused on lowering its warranty liability to the irreducible minimum — definitely the bean-counter's perspective

Customer and Warranty Service

In the past, Vigo has had problems with honoring its warranty and post-sale customer support, resulting in an unusually high number of complaints to the Better Business Bureau.

The situation appeared to be turning around under the direction of the company's new technical support manager. The company applied for and received accreditation by the BBB, and brought its rating up 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 a D-.

In our customer support and technical service tests, the company scored 3.2, well below the minimum acceptable score of 4.0. Especially notwaorthy were its exceptionally long hold times. We consider anything over 3 minutes excessive, and over 10 minutes unacceptable.

After our last update, a company spokesman indicated that Vigo was in the process of adding staff to the customer service program to reduce hold times to an acceptable level. However, the problems persist, so adding staff was apparantly not the solution.

Testing & Certification

The California Energy Commission sued Vigo Industries, LLC for illegally selling unapproved faucets in California from July 2015 to February 2018. The company paid a penalty of $86,287.00 to settle the suit in 2019.

Comparable Faucets

China- and Taiwan-made faucets comparable to Vigo include

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 contact us or post a comment below.