Friday 28 February 2014

Being responsible (I must be mad).

In our efforts to get all of the things which are wrong with our house sorted out (andastudioplease!) we had a double glazing company come to give us a quote a couple of weeks ago.  The process of getting a quote is such a pain in the bum!  

We had two strange men in the house for HOURS, wandering around with tape measures, telling us what we should do, bringing up other options, and generally faffing around so much that by the end of the evening it was very hard to pin down just exactly what they thought they were including in the huge quote they gave us.  It was a huge quote.  We knew it would be a lot of money, we have a lot of windows and doors, not to mention a leaking asbestos garage roof.  I hate the protocol these companies seem to have, of giving you "the quote", and then "the discounted price", and finally, "the discounted price with the further credit option discount" - you always feel that somehow you're being overcharged, the price seems so (huge) variable.

So they came, they saw, they huge quoted.  And now they've called back saying that as they're at the end of their accounting period, they'd like to give us a further discount (about a fifth off of their final with-a-credit-account quote), and they want to come out on Monday and re-measure.  But we'd need to sign up by the end of next week.  Gaaaaaaah!

So the only sensible thing to do, obviously, is to get a different company to come out tomorrow morning and do the whole dance again!

Tomorrow's company said (over the phone at least) that they could probably do the complete garage conversion, whereas the previous one could only do a straight replacement on the flat roof, and put doors in for us, so that much at least sounds promising.

I'm also wary of being overly keen to get the double glazing done, because our neighbours have recently gotten a new wood burning stove to heat their greenhouse, and I'm wondering if the new windows would keep the smell of the smoke out.  New windows would be nice . . .

I'm also wondering whether just getting tomorrow's quote will be enough, or if I really ought to find a third or even a fourth company to be sure we're doing the right thing and paying the right price.  !sigh!  Why is it that the more money you have to spend, the less reliable the work and the costs become?

No comments:

Post a Comment