The three most common problems associated with Chinese glass are as follows:

1)    The glass is out of bend.  This means that when the installer goes to put the glass where the old glass had been, the glass itself is the correct size but is not curved or bent like the old one.  When this happens, the installer has to become an artist and add glue to one side of the glass and/or take away glue from the opposite side to make the glass lay down properly in the hole.  The results are a sloppy job, more likely to leak water and air, and a piece of glass that is no longer aerodynamic with the rest of the vehicle.

2)     The glass will have distortions in it.  Unfortunately, you cannot fully see the distortions until you actually drive the vehicle down the road.  Then your view becomes as though you are looking through water wherever the distortions are in the glass.  This will most likely cause motion sickness and headaches.  If the distortions are on the passenger side, as the owner of the vehicle, you will most likely not see the problem until a passenger rides in the car with you.  If that doesn't happen often, it can be months before you realize the problem and then the shop that replaced the glass may not stand behind their product.  We have seen this specific thing happen.

3)    The pre applied moldings can come off easily.  Some auto glass arrives to the glass shop with moldings already attached.  They are actually chemically bonded onto the edges of the glass.  With glass manufactured in North America, there have been no problems.  However, we have seen these moldings fall away from the glass on numerous occasions when the glass originated in China.  If the driver is traveling down the road, the moldings can fly off and require the driver to go back to the shop and have a new windshield reinstalled with molding securely fastened to the glass to help insure the problem doesn't reoccur.  We know of one case where the molding did not come off until 3 months after the windshield was replaced and the client was in California and had to have the windshield redone while out of state.

The point in all this is, if you need a piece of glass, ask the shop you are considering to do your replacement if they are going to be using Chinese glass.  We do not recommend Chinese glass because the potential problems we have seen with it.  The problems do not necessarily show themselves immediately and often cause more headache, down time, and expense in the end.  In other words, you get what you pay for.