Bad Sales Experience

We were looking at having new conservatory so we contacted 4 different suppliers including Anglia. The Anglian salesman sounded very positive and produced a very good looking option on his laptop, but would not give a price. He said he would come back with a quote and wanted to do so after I had quotations from the other suppliers – I agreed to this, but I should have smelt a rat!

Anyway after seeing the other suppliers, they had supplied written/email proposals and I thought that it would only be fair if I got Anglia to do the same rather than giving them "special dispensation" to come up with an offer after seeing the other quotes.

So I contacted the salesman by SMS (he requested this rather than ringing) asking that he provide his quote so that I can compare with others, but he insisted that he wouldn't, and that he wanted to make the formal presentation "as agreed".

I then requested that if that was the case then he come to me before the others had given me their proposal, but again he refused.

At this point I gave up and told him that if he would not provide the quotation by email or at the new date, then I said that I would remove Anglian from our list of potential suppliers.

This he also refused to do, and I made it clear to him that it was up to the customer to change their mind and pointed out that he should "remember the stones" - a link to the salesman's course that has one of its rules is "the customer is always right".

Again he refused so I told him that I did not want to see him and that the matter was now closed and I was sorry that Anglian did not want to do business. I told him that I did not need him to tell me how to make a purchasing decision (I'd spent over a decade in pre-sales) and that I did not appreciate his attitude.

His response was "Them you (his words!) for wasting my time sir. I expect potential customers to have integrity and to keep to agreed courses of action. I do not need you to tell me how to do my job either. This number is now blocked on this phone as I require absolutely no contact further from you. Good day sir".

I hasten to add that my wife was most upset by the way their salesman treated us. As he insulted my integrity (not a good move for a potential supplier!) I did send him a follow on message from another mobile to explain why I wanted a written quote (as he never asked).

Based on my experience I will never contact Anglian again and I would recommend any other's considering them to make sure they get quotes from several other vendors as well and not to give Anglian the last "bite of the cherry". I did some more research and this does seem to be a standard approach by many double glazing salesmen where they initially come up with a very high price and then drop this to win the business and try to “pummel” the customer into submission.

I did accept that Anglian may have an excellent product, I am not impressed with the training they give their salesmen.