Two brothers thought they had found the perfect thing to help them deal with Toronto’s freezing winter weather – a nylon cover meant to protect a car windshield from snow and ice -- but the device ended up causing a bigger headache than clearing off the vehicle.
Ken Paisley came across a video of the product when using Facebook one day. In the video, the cover is removed from the vehicle and the windshield is free of ice and snow. He paid about $20 for a cover and even bought a couple for his wife and brother as Christmas present.
“I thought it was a great idea for keeping snow off the windshield and having to deal with ice,” Ken said. “We used it five to six times and had no problem … I didn’t touch the windshield with my brush.”
After much nudging from Ken, Steve Paisley said that he used the product for the first time to protect his vehicle from a recent winter storm that struck the GTA. When he woke up the following morning, he noticed damage to his car.
“It was flapping on my driver’s side, away from me as I was walking to me car,” Steve said. “I went around and immediately saw my roof smashed in. At first I thought I had been robbed, but I looked in the car and it was full of snow and broken glass.”
Steve’s sunroof was smashed and his windshield was cracked. The magnets embedded into the nylon of the windshield cover had smashed into his windows after strong wind gusts had lifted the cover.
Steve called his brother and when Ken went to check on his car, he found that his windshield cover was also partially unattached from the vehicle. He thought that his sunroof was covered in ice, but it was actually “completely shattered.”
“The next day the windshield was cracked as well,” Ken said.
Each brother will have to spend around $2,000 to replace the windshield and the sunroof on their cars.
“It’s beyond words I can say in public. I was so angry, very angry,” Ken said.
“He felt guilty after that,” Steve said of his brother.
Ken contacted the website where he purchased the product, but has not received a response. CTV News Toronto also tried to reach out to the company by email, but did not hear back.
There are numerous versions of the windshield covers. Most have flaps that tuck into the door of a vehicle and some tie around side mirrors or attach to the wheels. The Paisley brothers are now warning other consumers to keep an eye out for products that use magnets, especially if they plan on using them during storms.
“I just wouldn’t think that a product would have that kind of fault,” Ken said. “For this to happen just from wind gusts, something should be done better with the manufacturers.”
With files from CTV News Toronto's Pat Foran
