AVOID THEM

I was employed by Anglian for about 3 months in 2012. From start to finish it was an unpleasant experience and I was particularly shocked at the way paying customers were treated. I thought I should put my experience in writing in the hope that people will avoid this company. I worked at the Fareham Installation Depot which at the time was run by Ken Jones and Martin Pike.
Anglian does not use its own staff; the fittings are sub-contracted to self-employed glaziers and window fitters. As the sub-contractor pay was so poor at Fareham keeping fitters on the payroll was a constant problem. I can remember several occasions when we had to cancel installations on the day because a disgruntled fitter was holding his company owned van to ransom to make sure he was paid!
Whilst I worked for Anglian a new batch of fitters were recruited and trained. The training lasted three days after which the installers were let loose on people’s homes. At the end of the three days there was a test. This shouldn’t provide much reassurance as a member of the admin staff at the depot, with no practical experience actually sat the test and passed!
Sharp sales practices were in evidence from the start. Be warned; once Anglian have your deposit and a contract signed from a customer service perspective you are on a slippery slope and your right to cancel is non-existent. One particularly bad case sticks in my memory. Anglian targets the elderly for their sales. I can remember Martin Pike shouting down the phone at a CAB representative because citizen’s advice was going to the local papers over a contract Anglian refused to cancel. The old lady who had signed the contract had no recollection of doing so because she had dementia.
If you survive the contract process and are lucky enough to have windows fitted by someone with more than about a week’s experience then you best hope that the install is got right first time. Once Anglian have the balance from you and have pulled off site, that’s it, you’re on your own. Any follow up visit that an installer needed to make was known as a service call. Extreme cases included an eighty year old whose patio doors wouldn’t lock and another elderly gentleman who was left with no lining for his felt roof during two weeks of heavy weather. As far as I know his porch was ruined. Just in case you were wondering, Anglian doesn’t do refunds or compensation. The installers don’t want to do the service calls as no fee is involved.
In the weeks before I left things got really bad. Of the fitters we trained, all the good ones left after about a week. This meant the revenue from the installs dropped dramatically as the remaining fitters either overran or the customer refused to pay because the job was incomplete or bodged. Anglian’s answer? Ken Jones, under pressure from a senior manager cancelled all service calls indefinitely so fitters could start new jobs. So, if you had a problem the admin staff would book you an appointment, you would sit in all day waiting but the admin knew no one would be coming out to you.
A similar situation used to occur if the customer was just a one window job. If it represented low value to Anglian, it would get axed until a time that was more convenient to them. If you were going to get chopped we would normally tell you on the day.
My last day was another which is etched in my memory. Nights were beginning to get colder and installers who had been with us for about two weeks were on a site near Southsea. The customer was a widower in his eighties and for various reasons struggled with communication. For this reason it will come as no surprise that we managed to sell this poor individual £8000 worth of windows and doors. The installers wanted to get off site as they were moving to a different employer and this was their last job. We left that poor old man without a door for the night!
Reading this back I am ashamed that I have not spoken up sooner. In fairness there were one of two good installer teams at Fareham and Fareham was just one depot. It was the management there who had the most to answer for; they cared about nothing beyond their bottom line. I hope that someone will read this and based on its content will decide not to give Anglian their hard earned money