I think it's pretty normal. This is the side of my neighbours house, after one year.

WOW - I never noticed seams before lol.

One of the issues with vinyl siding is that the product expands quite a bit when it gets warm so you have to have lots of room and you can't fasten the ends. It is the nature of the product

That's how vinyl looks unfortunately

Unfortunately, are a necessary condition in vinyl siding. The better quality system seem to do better, but even they have joints and in the right conditions (temp and light source) can appear quite large. Poor installation will usually exacerbate the visual problems (i.e nailing too tight, forcing trim or accessories, improper cutting and forming transitions). While you horizontal laps could use some more attention, I would be more concerned with the dimplings I see in the some of the termination panel at the bottom, the excessive gap between that strip and the first horizontal panel (dimples of nailing strip visible), corners dimpled...........all of which tells me not enough attention was paid to these elements during the installation........in short your installers are slapping it up as quickly as possible (time = money) and taking some short cuts. Next year they'll be more evident in the visual....

I would say something now before they go much further.

The seams are also always more noticeable from one direction -- depends on which way the light is coming from. If I stand on the other end of the house and look back, the seams are almost invisible. STK makes good points about the dimpling though. My cousin, an contractor, once told me that vinyl "siding is hung, not nailed...." nailing too tight creates wavy siding as it tries to expand and contract with temperature changes, and can't...

I'm SO glad I saw this prior to paying for our installation! We have had so many issues with this particular company even though they basically begged for a second chance. We have had the eaves, windows and soffits all covered but no siding on the house as it is hardy plank. I have noticed a LOT of seams and wonder if this is normal. They also did not put the gutter system back correctly as we had these put on prior. It is a system that NEEDS to be correct to prevent water behind the gutters! I need to know if these photo's are 'normal' or do we need them to come back and fix the work? Please HELP!