The Awnings Market (Garden Awnings in General)

Member Name: thatwelshman

Product:	Garden Awnings in General
Date:	10/10/02 (1039 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Shade at the touch of a button, Wind sensor keeps the awning safe, No more fading in the lounge (we hope)

Disadvantages: none as yet

Ok first report so here goes.... We decided because of my wifes intolerance to uv light to purchase a patio awning, and as usual went the route of the garden centres. It appears that these stores have stayed in a timewarp over the last few decades in relation to these products...

The Wickes product is nothing more than a venetian blind with some upvc-like arms and only the ususal butcher shop stripes, and none of the other high street stores are any better. So we decided to look to the specialists and wouldn't you know it they were unable to give any prices over the phones, we therefore took the three biggest and 'invited' them into the home (shudders).

First of all were Cordula. The product was far better than we had seen in the stores, but the salesman only had photos, and had been trained by SS Gurbenfuhrer in the tactics of hard sales, we went through the usual of ringing his boss to get a better price etc etc, so Mr Cordula had the opportunity to measure the garden path as he was politely shown the front door 3 hours after arriving.

Nationwide, well they didn't turn up, no phone call, nothing. He did arrive the next night and came up with the idea of an awning over pretty much the back of the house, he also mentioned that 'New European directives' insist that the awning would have have a sun and wind sensor and would therefore need to be automatic, not just worried about our bananas those cunning Europeans are now interfering with the style of our patios..... Or of course it was just patter to get us to spend more, final cost was a lot for something that didn't look much better than the diy version.

Finally we had the Thomas Sanderson round, by now we were sick of the whole idea and were thinking of buying a full chemical warfare suit to keep the sun off my wife. This was thankfully unneccesary! First difference was he took out a compass and checked the lay of the patio, and then assessed where the
sun would come from, next he actually looked at the wall and mentioned that we would need a special bracket to spread the load of the awning, next we actually got to see a full awning, and the differences with the shop bought ones were plain to see, stainless steel etc. Fabrics were there by the thousand and finally we took advantage of the interest free, but there are other options

Hope this is of some help to someone out there!

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