When you pay for a new kitchen, a deposit is taken and then a final balance is usually paid, all before any work actually starts on said new kitchen. When you pay for a holiday, you pay a deposit when you book it, and then you pay the final balance 12 weeks before the date of your outbound flight, assuming you’re booking well in advance.
So why is it then that we allowed ourselves to get into a situation where we sign home owners up with a small deposit at the start, then so many of us don’t take payment until the work has been completed? A new kitchen or a holiday can cost the same as new windows and doors, so why is it that they can take payment for such things before work commences and we cannot?
It’s a crazy situation we find ourselves in, and one that gives the home owner all the control and the installer absolutely no protection at all. Despite whatever ombudsmen and trade bodies there are out there.
Damaging to business
You wouldn’t go do your weekly shop, then tell the person at the till you’ll come back and pay once you’ve made tonight’s meal, assuming that it tasted nice. No. You have to pay before you leave with it. As with many other things in this world.
This post has been inspired by a conversation with an industry friend of mine who ran out of patience with the way our industry agrees to be paid by the home owner. And I completely agreed.
As it is, most installers take a deposit upon signature of the contract, and then no payment is required until the job has been completed. Good customer service some might say. I would argue, that given how much more demanding and often unreasonable home owners now are, I say this is damn risky and I am sure that there are plenty of installers out there who could fill the comments section on this post with stories about how large sums of money have been withheld from then for petty, at time ridiculous reasons.
Do we not think that this is crazy? Say you have a £12k contract for a house full of windows and doors. You take a £3k deposit and then continue with final survey, ordering and then installation. You have £9k outstanding. Which is a large sum of money to any sized installer. What if that home owner decides that there’s suddenly a few scratches on their handles, or their product somehow wasn’t what they imagined it would be, or some other excuse. You’re not likely to get that £9k balance now. Not until that home owner you thought was going to be reasonable has had their pound of flesh and some compensation from you for whatever perceived inconvenience has been caused.
It’s time we woke up and evolved. Home owners have. Laws have. And we’re all wide open to abuse with little protection.
Bad home owners vs good home owners
I don’t want to tarnish all home owners with the same brush. There are plenty of very reasonable, nice people who work with installers in the window and door industry and are helpful.
But I won’t lie and say that since I first started in this industry 12 years ago I think home owners have become far more demanding, expectant and down right difficult and awful to deal with. I think a mixture of negative TV programmes, heavily consumer-focused legislation, the internet and our own internal problems have combined to create a situation where a certain percentage of home owners believe they can screw window and door installers overs.
For example, we have been on site this week where we have had a number of hold-ups. All out of our control. Firstly, the start was delayed 24 hours due to one of our installers falling very ill at the beginning. But instead of showing concern for our guy, we were accused of being in breach of contract, and was threatened to be kicked off-site before we have even begun, and that we were liars. We did eventually start, but it wasn’t long before this home owner decided that he didn’t like what he signed on our contract, wanted some extra work doing that was not on the contract, but said we had said we’d do it anyway. We politely said that it wasn’t part of the contract, but was told in response that we’d be taken to court if we didn’t do the extra work, that the order which was currently being installed would be cancelled, and that again we’d be kicked off site. We’ve still not finished the work.
Unfortunately, no matter how water tight we make our paper work, how clear we make it for the home owner, how many t’s we cross and i’s we dot, there is a growing number of home owners who just cannot be pleased, and I feel that are out to get something for nothing and to be a gigantic pain in the arse.
This is where deposits and payments after completion just doesn’t work in this day and age now. Perhaps it did in the bad old days of the 80’s and 90’s where the industry’s reputation was worse than it was for politicians and estate agents. But not now. We have changed a lot since then, and there are plenty of new laws and legislation to protect home owners from dodgy double glazing companies.
We have no protection as installers from home owners who wish to withhold their final balance until they get what ever they want. It has to stop. Our jobs as installers are already hard enough as it is. We’re all short staffed. Drowning in products we often know little about. Fabrication quality is going south. Then we have home owners refusing to pay or holding on to their balances until they see fit to pay their installer. It’s down right rude and installers absolutely need genuine protection from rogue home owners before it costs them serious money.
The sad thing is, as installers, we always remember the bad customers instead of the good ones. And it does create a very negative feeling. I must say that I haven’t felt the installer part of the industry this negative in quite a long time. I sense that patience with home owners and suppliers is at an all time low. Stress levels are high. We should all be protecting ourselves, and follow in the footsteps of the kitchen and holiday industries and be taking payment before the work starts. Home owners are supposed to have IBGs which protect their money, so no risk there. And at least then window and door installers might feel more protected and valued whilst work begins.
To round off, I think customers have easily forgotten that glazing businesses are run by people too. We’re not faceless organisations. We’re people, working with other people, trying hard to make sure a home owner’s new windows and doors are installed to the best standards and with the best customer service.
If you’re a home owner and you’ve stumbled across this article, please bear this in mind next time you ring up your window and door supplier if there is an issue to be resolved. Kindness gets your far further sometimes than shouting down the other end of the phone.
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Brilliant post and one that installers can relate to up and down the country. We struggle to get any deposit, as most in our area bar the nationals take zero deposit. That being said, as in everything in this industry, the payment before installation idea would never work because we’ve ruined our own industry. You can guarantee that the 1 local firm that requires payment before installation would lose a significant amount of business, when competing against others that don’t even take a deposit. If we could go down the route of the Kitchen companies, we would have a much… Read more »
Great read, but when we proceed on any project we always take a deposit and back it with our GGFi deposit backed insurance. This gives the client the confidence that we are not a cowboy company.
We have started implementing a payment schedule of 35% deposit with order, 35% due on commencement and balance due on completion which means our exposure is limited. That being said we have been made to sing for the remainder 30%, by a few customers who will never be satisfied unless they get something off the final bill. This is very annoying as invariably the contract price has already been negotiated. This type of customer will never agree to pay in full before the job starts!!
Great post i always take a deposite of 50 % as i was taken for quite alot of money by a previous customer my rule is no deposit no order simple as , there are alot of companys out there offering 0 deposit which has a detramental effect on all as we then feel that as a installier we have to offer the same .
Great article – absolutely agree. It’s something I’ve been passionate about for sometime. Some home owners even look for opportunities after the installation to renegotiate the original price as they know they are in the driving seat. Also – all of the consumer programmes on TV encourage this behaviour! I guess it comes from the history we’re living with after the “double glazing salesman” and black sheep of the industry (you know who you are).