You pays your money... (Safestyle UK)

Member Name: allthesevens

Product:	Safestyle UK
Date:	11/04/03 (1526 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Product, Fitting

Disadvantages: Customer Service

My experience of Safestyle was definitely a mixed bag.

We only needed a single window replacing in our house, and although I have an almost pathological hatred of plastic windows the one in question isn't really visible from the outside. We decided it would probably be best to just bite the bullet and do it - a upvc window would probably be quicker and cheaper than a bespoke wooden sash affair - besides, it was early winter and the rotten old window simply wasn't up to the job.

Someone at my wife's work had recommended Safestyle, so she called them and arranged for a salesman to call. He turned up at about 8 - which was fine. Nice enough bloke - didn't seem too high-pressure. He did the patter, did the demo, measured up: all well and good. Then he priced up the window: £1200! He then explained that we were entitled to a 60% discount, and it was at this point I started to get irritated. Giving ridiculous discounts is such an obvious "aren't you getting a good deal" ploy. Why not just quote a price?

We then started to talk about paying for it. As it was now "discounted" to £500 I told him we'd give them a cheque. He didn't seem to like this idea much and we spent the next 40 minutes listening to the advantages to financing it, although it wasn't possible just to finance the window. We would have to be lent £1000 at an APR of something like 18% which we could pay back over 10 years. This seemed a pretty daft idea as we could afford to pay for it outright. After a while he seemed to percieve that this was going nowhere and agreed that we could pay by cheque. All I thought was that I was being suckered into something I would regret. We signed, basically because it was 11PM and I was about on my knees. We agreed that the window would be fitted "certainly within 4 weeks, but we'll call to confirm". At this point I just wanted the bloke out of the house and was thinking "there
are cooling-off periods in these sorts of contracts."

Wrong. Apparently - and I don't know if this applies to all contracts of this nature - if you invite a salesman into your house (as opposed to them cold-calling) and you sign a contract it is UNBREAKABLE. Be warned - there isn't a cooling off period. At this point (easy to be wise after the event, I know) I started doing my online research... and found dooyou. Needless to say I wasn't best pleased with what I read.

So when a Safestyle rep phoned to tell me they couldn't fit it within a month and that it would now be nearer two, I got extremely annoyed. I just felt that I was being stitched up and that my worst fears about the company were being realised. This wasn't helped by the rep's attitude which was so absolutely from the "f*** you" school of customer care it almost took my breath away. He actually hung up on me when I started to complain about the broken promise. Basically - as I was in a position of having signed an unbreakable contract and needing a window really quite badly - I was forced to call them back and accept the later date.

Two months later. The date arrived.

And this is where I have to be honest: the rest of it was really very good indeed. The fitter was due to turn up at nine. He did - actually at 8:55. He removed the old window with almost no mess. He was polite, friendly and professional. He put the new window in place. He sealed it in. He cleaned up the dust. He tested it. And he was gone by 11AM. The window looks excellent even to someone who doesn't particularly like upvc.

So if anyone from Safestyle is reading this:

1) You have a good product.
2) You have competent fitters (well, at least one)
3) You have polite salesmen (well, at least one)
4) You have truly awful customer service managers / reps (I suspect rather more than one)
5) You have a stupid contracting / financi
ng policy (although I expect it makes you a lot of money.)

And if anyone else is reading this: all I can say is you might regret choosing Safestyle. Then again you might not. Not very helpful, but that's my experience of them.

And I can't believe I've managed to write this much about having a window fitted...

Summary: