Safelite Windshield Replacement is the Ultimate Convenience

Note: We received a windshield replacement to facilitate our review. We were not compensated monetarily for this post. All opinions are honest and are our own. 

Our city seems to do road work on a regular basis – which I appreciate, and all, except that there’s often loose gravel on the freeway, and our minivan has been a magnet for it. Our windshield is the prime target, and we had five cracks on various places across the glass, including one spot that had spread quite a bit (confession: that crack’s been there for over a year). We’d been putting off getting the cracks fixed because we felt like we just didn’t have time to go in and get it taken care of – little did we know we could’ve used a service like Safelite to get it fixed conveniently.

Since we’d let our windshield accumulate cracks, and since one of the cracks was spreading to the edge of the windshield, it was a better idea to go ahead and get our entire windshield replaced. Travis from Safelite came right out to our office building, new windshield in tow.

Here’s where I feel like I ought to include a public service announcement: Did you know that your windshield might be heated without you ever realizing that? It can! We had no clue ours was heated because there’s not a button to turn the feature on; it’s automatic when we turn on the front defroster. So when Safelite asked me if we had a heated windshield, I said no. Whoops!

Luckily Travis was extremely gracious about having to order a different windshield and reschedule a time for the replacement.

When he came back, he showed us the process of repairing a crack before he replaced the windshield, and it really made me wish we hadn’t put off repair for so long. It takes about 10-20 minutes for Safelite to repair cracks, and they come right to your home or place of business so it couldn’t be easier.  You can see below our crack before and the windshield afterward, along with a few steps of the process along the way:

I was really impressed! But of course, like I mentioned our windshield had so many cracks that we were getting our entire windshield replaced. It started raining, so we moved into our office’s parking garage.

Since Safelite comes to you, their vans are equipped with everything the technician will need to replace your windshield. I was impressed with how efficiently the space within the van is used; there’s even a built-in heater for the adhesive tubes. Genius!

Since I knew I’d be writing a post about this process, I asked a lot of questions about how things worked – and Travis knows this process inside and out. I was completely impressed with his professionalism and with how much pride he clearly takes in his work.

He showed us how he removed the windshield using a hand-cranked device with a special type of line:

He was very careful every step of the way to make sure our car was protected, which I appreciate. There’s no cutting corners or rushing through anything – every step of their process is well-orchestrated, as was evident in our experience with them. I was impressed, too, in all the thought put toward making this a process that technicians can complete on their own. You’d think removing and installing a new windshield would be a two-man job, but thanks to smart equipment one person can easily complete everything.

Once the old windshield was removed Travis was careful to trim down the old adhesive left on the frame of the car so that he’d have a nice flat surface for the new windshield to sit on. You can see the surface, and then the bead of adhesive, in the photos below:

He used a device that mounts with suction cups on the driver’s side window to easily position and place the new windshield. It looked almost effortless, although I know there was a lot of precision that went into it.

He taped the winshield to help secure it as the adhesive dries, and then he wiped down all of our windows – I can only imagine how many little fingerprints he wiped off the inside of the windows! We were impressed that even after completing the installation Safelite takes the extra step of having technicians wipe down the windows and vacuum the interior.

It looks great  and we’re thrilled to have a crack-free windshield! We stayed down with the car since I wanted to take photos for my post, but it’s nice to know that typically all of this could be taking place while we were upstairs at work, uninterrupted. Safelite also has an app that their technicians use to receive information and to clock how long installations take – I was impressed with the high-tech aspect of this; yet another way Safelite strives for efficiency.

We will definitely use Safelite in the future for any cracks we get. We were pleased from start to finish and would recommend them for any windshield repairs and replacements you might need.

Here’s a video explaining even more about their services:

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