If you have never had the pleasure of inviting a window salesman into your home, please let me enlighten you:
Last weekend I booked in 3 double-glazing companies to provide us with quotes for the replacement of windows in our house. Now to be fair 2 out of the 3 were ok. But the 3rd one more than outweighed the fairly decent experience of the others. In my naivety I thought two hour slots should be more than enough to measure a few windows and doors, get a price and exchange a few pleasantries to boot. How wrong I was.
Salesman No.1 arrives on time and is friendly enough. He shows us his product, highlighting the special benefits of the window, technical aspects, security features etc. You'd think his company was the only one in the world supplying such an amazing product! Well, I can't fault him for that, after all it's his job to sell it to the best of his ability. I would have appreciated a little more honesty though (the amazing special features are actually standardized minimum requirements set out in the Building Regulations) and less sexism: 'The ladies love our products because you can release this lever which allows you to clean the window from the outside!!' Well Heyho, and here I thought it was 2010. At least he had finished his presentation and provided us with a quote after an hour.
then the nightmare began...
Salesman No.2 arrived an hour late. Not to worry I thought, one hour to go before the next one arrives - might be a little tight, but should probably work out. Little did I know. It started out ok with a few pleasantries about the house and our little 'building-project', hardly relevant to the quote, but I wanted to be polite. I started to realise though that he liked to go on a bit and started to push him in the direction of getting down to business. So he started off by explaining how his company doesn't run national ad campaigns, but uses the money 'saved' to discount their product to customers that are willing to put a board outside their home advertising their company. So far so good. Apparently customers can get further savings if they agree to submit their home with before&after pictures to their quarterly magazine/brochure. In principle there is nothing wrong with that. However, the lengthy questionnaire that followed was so plain ridiculous it beggars belief! Why I didn't have the foresight to ask him to leave and not waste our time I don't know, so regrettably Paul and I went along with the whole charade. The questionnaire determines whether our house is on a side or main road, whether it is busy or not, whether there are schools, pubs, restaurants, post offices, industrial estates, supermarkets, bus routes, train lines, underground stations, recreation centres, neighborhood watch schemes, police stations, hospitals, doctor's offices,.... nearby. The list goes on and on. An hour has already passed and we haven't even seen his window product yet! Not only has it taken half an hour to fill in the form, he then has to call his 'manager' to read the whole thing back to him to establish a discount rating for us!
Meanwhile my phone rings and who else can it be but:
Salesman No.3. Well, here goes let's bring the competitive marketplace into our home. Naturally neither salesman is happy about the situation, but No.3 is at least professional about it and gets on with the job in hand - measuring windows! In the space of half an hour, I have a quote for the job. And guess what,
Salesman No.2 is still there, despite Paul having gone round the house with him and measured the windows for him! It takes a further half an hour for him to work out a price which is double that of the other 2 quotes.. He must know how inflated his company's prices are, because he was nervous from the minute the other guy turned up. After we refuse to sign up for the ridiculous offer he phones his manager (Why he has to this with us around is beyond me initially, but soon becomes clear) who then 'improves' the price by another couple of thousand pounds. I had made it clear from the beginning that I wanted a quote and would not make a decision that day - nevertheless he tries to persuade me to sign on the dotted line, even trying to trick me by saying it's not a contract, when it blatantly is. Well luckily I was not born yesterday and made sure I read everything carefully. Meanwhile he phones his manager again who lowers the price even further, but is not even getting close to the other quotes we've had. Again I refuse and finally he agrees that we will not be purchasing anything that day. A good two and a half hours after he turned up he finally leaves. Phew!!
Finally we manage to get a little work done so that we don't feel like the entire day has been wasted.
So, moral of the story? If you want new windows or any other type of product involving salespeople, read up internet reviews of your chosen companies first, as they can save you a lot of hassle. Company No.2 are known for their appalling tactics as I realised too late.
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