St Helens Glass Review

Overall Rating

None

Overpriced.
Salemen linger during quotation meetings.
Pushy sales techniques.
Missed appointments.

I arranged an appointment with St Helens Glass to get a quotation for some work I needed doing in my house a few days ago. I chose to ask them because I'd done a quick search on the internet and found few complaints compared to other glazing manufacturers.

The first appointment made was for an afternoon on a weekend at 3pm. 4pm arrived and the consultant hadn't turned up, so I rang to find out where they were. I was told by a call centre rep that they would look into the consultant's whereabouts and they would call me back shortly.

Wednesday arrived, and still no returned the call from SHG. I accessed their website and emailed a complaint. I stated that was very unprofessional and a disturbing indication of the future experiences I may have if I choose to become a customer. Within an hour I received a call from a 'manager' offering his apologies. He promised to find out exactly what went wrong and rectify the situation. He also offered, if I was still willing, to send over one of the 'managers' that very evening to give me a quote. He promised that, because of the initial missed appointment, the quote would be at trade price. He assured me the manager would be 'in and out quickly' leaving us with a quotation, and that there would be no sales tactics or 'hard sell' that is common with other glazing companies.

I agreed to receive a quotation from them that evening.

That evening the SHG employee/rep arrived on time. I outlined what I wanted done and asked him to give me a quotation, including VAT and installation charges. 10 minutes later, after much shuffling of brochures and pieces of paper, I was told the basic price for what I was looking for - £4200. However, the rep who had come to see me, decided that he might be able to get me a further discount.

Firstly, I was offered a 5% discount if I was prepared to have a SHG sticker visible for 2 weeks on the installed products. I agreed. A few more papers were shuffled. The rep said he might be able to get me a further 5% discount if I agreed to accept a phone call from their marketing department within the next year. A simple enough request. I agreed.

Next a biggie. A possible 10% discount. Have I ever heard of their 'Classic Account'? I told him I hadn't. I was told that, (I quote) "Basically, we make the first 5 payments for you, we give you 5 vouchers, we take the monthly payment from your bank account as normal, then you send us the voucher and we send you your money back". "We have to do it this way for legal reasons". "If you pay via our Classic Account we will give you a 10% discount". I declined, saying I wished to pay in cash. The rep responded, "So.. you don't want a 10% discount"? I said I wished to pay the costs immediately. The rep responded "OK, so you don't want a 10% discount"?

Normally when purchasing other items, I've been offered a discount for paying in cash, or in one payment by cheque. Here I was being offered a discount for delaying my payments. Delaying them for 5 months in fact. I wonder what the interest rates were... I didn't need to ask.

So, we are now thirty minutes into the quotation meeting. I was getting impatient. I stated simply that I wanted a quote for the cost of the materials and the installation. I was offered a look at their product. I declined. I was told about how heavy it was. I was told about how inferior other products were compared to theirs. I was told how flimsy the materials were in neighbouring houses. This opinion was based upon a glance at a neighbours doors and windows from the opposite side of the street (a distance of about 60 - 70 feet), in low level street lighting, at night. Remarkably good eyesight and judgement I think you'll agree.

I was getting ready to call it a day. I told the rep that I wanted a final quote. He said he would have to phone his manager to see if he could get any further discounts for us. This happened twice in the next five minutes. Still no quote. On one occasion the person on the phone said something to the rep. The rep replied saying "no, I haven't asked them that yet. I'll ask them now". He asked us (I quote) "Would you purchase our product if the price was right"? I nearly started laughing. How rehearsed and wooden does that sound?

I responded by saying that I was going to get several quotes before making a decision. He asked if I had a price in mind. I told him that I hadn't, and that It would depend on the other quotes. I asked for his quotation. He told me he was waiting for a call from his manager. I responded by saying that I would like him to leave if the call wasn't received in the next few minutes. At this point he decided to call his manager again. After a few moments he told us that the manager would like to speak with us in person.

We spoke to the manager who said that he needed another 10 minutes to input our data into the computer before giving us a final figure. We refused, telling him that we knew what the discount would be - possibly another 5 or 10%. The manager responded by telling us that we could not possibly know what the discount would be, and that if we did, we should be working here and not him. We told the manager that we were not prepared to wait because the rep had been with us for 40 minutes already. We asked for the quote to be posted to us. The manager said he was not prepared to do that. At this point we said goodbye to the manager and asked the rep to leave.

At the beginning, after the complaint, the company promised to send a manager around to give us a quotation. They promised to offer us trade prices. They promised that the visit would be brief and that there would be no sales tactics or hard sell. The visit in total took 55 minutes. It is my opinion that all of these promises were broken. The last figure that was mentioned was in the region of £3500. A quote we had received a few days before, offered the materials at around the £600 region.

We received a visit from another company about half an hour later. The gentleman arrived, we told him what we were looking for. He measured up and left in under 10 minutes, promising to drop the quotation into us the next day. That's what asking for a quotation should lead to. Not the SHG approach. The visit did make me wonder about how an elderly or vulnerable person might have coped with the same situation.

Members' Comments onpaddyp's Review

• 45lovers on 15th Nov 2006

  I agree, I had the same problem with all but one of my quotations, including the one from St Helens Glass. Who funnily enough said that SHG were the Rolls Royce of windows, and Safe Style UK were the Ford Mondeo's. Not only am I not interested in cars, but I had to chuckle as the sales guy drove off in his Mondeo.
  
  I do however, like you, worry about those not so strong as us who will be broken by these sales tactics. If you haven't already bought your windows. play them all off against each other to get the right price for you.