Anglian windows - any advice please?

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We think we would like a new front door. It's an old wooden door and it is ok but we decided to get a quote from Anglian as a rep came to the door and we took it as a starting point. O my.... the man was not very good. He had obviously read something that said to make reference to items in the room and praise them or ask questions about them at random intervals.

He tried the hard sell, indicating that we had this chance only today as the company had targets for the end of the month and the manager might be prepared to do discounts on the last day of this month... the company had lost a million pounds a week during the holidays [ repeated later]. He also made the front room reek of cigarette smoke and we had to open the windows after he left.

Anyway, the starting price for this door [that the police in Leeds complain that they can't batter down] was 3500. If we did certain things - put a board out, put up a review, let them have the wooden door, it would be 2700. I wonder if it is legal to offer price reduction in exchange for reviews. He wouldn't go into the other discounts of 60% unless we listened in detail to the hoops we would have to go through which we didn't have the time nor the patience for. Part way through this, I looked them up and found a 1* review which described exactly what was happening in our front room with the added news from another source that 100% commission is the basis that the reps work on.

Now obviously, we are going to get more quotes, hopefully without having to air the room... any suggestions or comments would be welcome.
 
When we had our doors and windows done a few years back the doors were only £750 so I think with inflation a door should be no more than £1200 now
 
My neighbour's are still battling with Anglia two years after fitting, over their crappy windows and draughty doors.
 
3 years since a new front door, modern composite, red outside and white in, door knocked and letter box around 800 plus fitting so about 1k.
 
Chipper by posting on here ,I think you already know the answer , find a local firm with premises . So you can see there work
 
We had Anglian do our complete house including front door (composite), lead diamonds to all windows and a French door at the back requiring bricks below existing window removed. That was 5 years ago, no hard sell, in fact we were only going to do door and front window, we literally had to force him to quote whole house price, which was so reasonable we couldn't believe our luck. They did a really good job and having called them back to fix a couple of small problems they were quick and good in fixing the problem.
We originally called them in because of the complete mess a local company had made doing our front door, the locks constantly jammed so we had to use our back door to get in and when anyone rang the bell we had to hope we could nip round to the front before they assumed no-one was in and went away.

Usually 2 sides to a story, but we were later told that we almost got them at cost price because the economy was in such a state and few people were buying luxuries they could do without.
 
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Have I understood this correctly, Chipper. He was quoting £3,500 for a door?!!

We had our front door replaced about 4 months ago(the dog broke one of the glass panels in the old door) with a composite one (looks like wood but is much easier to maintain) with high security locks for £1,100 and this is in London.

I'm surprised that a company which I thought was OK would use those sort of tactics.

Apart from not using them I'd be tempted to write to Anglian letting them know how impressed you were by the sales pitch.

Dave
 
Yes - £3500, then £2700 if we jumped through those hoops - he was careful to say not a positive review, just a review and then keeping our wooden door [odd] - we aren't going to touch them with a barge pole. It is interesting to see the price that we should be expecting though. We had a recommendation for a local firm last night when we were out with some friends and I have an enquiry in with another local firm.

My other half was a headteacher; she had two ICT companies come at the build of the new school. One quoted £100k to kit out the ICT [back in 2001ish] and the other big name came in with £60k. When the more expensive bid was ignored, they came back with a similar quote [with no indication from her what they were trying to beat] but she binned them telling them quite clearly what she thought of the way they did business and that she didn't trust them. We are waiting for the follow up phone call and will quite enjoy dropping this man right in it and telling them what we think of their approach. He didn't give us his name but I saw it when he logged in to his computer.

Hopefully, our front room won't reek of smoke when I get to it this morning. Ick.
 
Yeah, Anglia quoted some crazy price for some work a while back. Before I knew it, it was 25% off. Over the following weeks it dropped to something like 60% off. I eventually asked them if the work was "worth" 10k how they could possibly afford to do a proper job for 4. Then I asked them not to call me again and got Everest to do the job.
 
On the few occasions we have had this kind of salesman in the house, British Gas being the last, I have made it very clear that I wanted the best price they can do as the first price they give and none of this suddenly knocking x% off if we sign now.
The moment they mention a large discount after we say no to the first price they are shown the door and told to leave immediately as they were prepared to over charge us a minute ago.
 
PaulF said:
On the few occasions we have had this kind of salesman in the house, British Gas being the last, I have made it very clear that I wanted the best price they can do as the first price they give and none of this suddenly knocking x% off if we sign now.
The moment they mention a large discount after we say no to the first price they are shown the door and told to leave immediately as they were prepared to over charge us a minute ago.
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That is what I have always done. My experience has been that if you ask for their best price the genuine companies will always give you that without any further delay.
 
Loads of people have already said it but find a well recommended local company that you can get testimonials from and ignore the big name rip-off merchants. We've had our front door and windows replaced this year. This was a 3 bed semi with a couple of large toughened glass windowpanes included for £5500. Quality is first rate and the they were a pleasure to deal with.

£3.5k for a door is having a laugh. To then basically lie to you with a load of false discounts and reduce it by £800 is insulting. We had a similar experience at our last house when we got a quote for new windows from Safestyle and Anglian. Ridiculously high initial quotes and then all sorts of discounts if we signed up there and then. In the end we didn't bother and moved house a year or so later. I can't believe they are still using the same sales patter now...
 
We have an Anglian conservatory and a window misted up, it is out of warranty but I phoned Anglian anyway. I also had another non-Anglian door panel misting up and I wanted a new patio door and some new roofline stuff. They arranged a visit for a quote for the new stuff and then said that they would put me through to the maintenance dept. for the misted units. I was told by maintenance that they did not do units made by others and that the conservatory was out of warranty and they could no longer supply a replacement sealed unit. After threatening to cancel the visit for the quote on the new stuff they agreed to "see what they could do" if I e-mailed them pictures and dimensions. The rep turned up and did the same, talking about our garden etc. and than offering various discounts, she said that a quote would be e-mailed to me. After about 3 weeks she rang and asked what we had decided, I told her that I had not received a quote, she then apologised and offered another discount - but the offer ended the next day!!
I then told her that a local firm had quoted for all the work for a price less than their multi-discounted one without any hassle at all.
PS I never did hear anything from Anglian about the misted unit!
 
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Yes, they seem beyond the pale. Sadly, they must find people who are taken in by their BS. Ah well.
 
You let him smoke in your house and quote a rip off price like that. I would of drop kicked him out the front door.

Anyway, think yourself lucky,I was just the other day quoted 20k for a new conservatory roof.
 
Just the roof or whole conservatory?
 
AshleyC said:
You let him smoke in your house and quote a rip off price like that. I would of drop kicked him out the front door.

Anyway, think yourself lucky,I was just the other day quoted 20k for a new conservatory roof.
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For 20k you can get a two storey extension!
 
Or you could ask me for a quote ? I work for the commercial side of Anglian who do all the housing association windows around the Midlands! I’m in Leeds working in a few weeks time!
 
Chipper said:
We think we would like a new front door. It's an old wooden door and it is ok but we decided to get a quote from Anglian as a rep came to the door and we took it as a starting point. O my.... the man was not very good. He had obviously read something that said to make reference to items in the room and praise them or ask questions about them at random intervals.

He tried the hard sell, indicating that we had this chance only today as the company had targets for the end of the month and the manager might be prepared to do discounts on the last day of this month... the company had lost a million pounds a week during the holidays [ repeated later]. He also made the front room reek of cigarette smoke and we had to open the windows after he left.

Anyway, the starting price for this door [that the police in Leeds complain that they can't batter down] was 3500. If we did certain things - put a board out, put up a review, let them have the wooden door, it would be 2700. I wonder if it is legal to offer price reduction in exchange for reviews. He wouldn't go into the other discounts of 60% unless we listened in detail to the hoops we would have to go through which we didn't have the time nor the patience for. Part way through this, I looked them up and found a 1* review which described exactly what was happening in our front room with the added news from another source that 100% commission is the basis that the reps work on.

Now obviously, we are going to get more quotes, hopefully without having to air the room... any suggestions or comments would be welcome.
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Why would they want your old front door? Is it an antique one with stained glass or something? I’ve never heard of any DG company wanting the old door in PX!

As others have said, get it sorted through a decent local company. They should give you a straight quote without all the “this deal’s only open if you sign today” or “I’ll talk to my manager and see what we can do” BS. My only dealings with Anglian were 30 years ago when they quoted £13k just to replace the windows in a 3 bed semi. I eventually got it done by a local company....... for £5k. (and it’s still going strong.).
 
The previous owner in our house used CR Smith to replace all the windows, front double doors and also a large stained glass window in the top hall ceiling. The windows are the large sash kind for sandstone houses.

Total bill on the invoice was £15k but I did notice he had the hindsight to implement retention and rightly so because there was quite the snagging list but it was dealt with promptly because they wanted the retention money. He was a conveyancing solicitor though which probably helped.
 
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