The reputation of the industry is really taking a battering at the moment. Days after the BBC reported that Safestyle had been fined £120,000 for unlawful selling methods, another Bradford-based company has been fined for the very same thing. This time for the amount of nearly £65,000. And there was a 15 month suspended jail sentence for the person responsible too.
The Mirror article
You can read the full article on The Mirror website here: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/no-wonder-double-glazing-salesmen-12940723
In the piece, it explains how the guilty party collected over £1m in sales using typically dirty tactics that far too many in this industry will be familiar with. It’s reported that his company left home owners with unfinished work, got them to pay up front before the job was finished by taking out their old windows and threatening to not fit the new ones until the balance was paid. It goes on to say that toughened glass wasn’t supplied in the right areas, which is a basic and big balls up, took payments including VAT – despite being NOT VAT registered.
The list goes on. If you click the link above you’ll be able to read through the bullet points that smack of good old fashioned industry thuggery. The exact behaviour which has tainted our industry for so long, and has left home owners doubting the professionalism and quality of our industry.
This is also the exact reason why hard-selling of any kind has to be banned outright. It’s worth stating from the start that there are plenty of good installers out there who obviously don’t participate in dodgy sales methods, which is only right. However, there remains a stubborn portion of the sector that still think hard-sell of any kind is OK. When it isn’t. And as we have seen in the past week or so, it only takes a handful of companies to step over the line of what is right to bring their companies and the industry into disrepute.
If you’ve already read the Mirror article, you’ll see that the nice chap found guilty is pictured with Floyd Mayweather. You many also know that he has been advertising windows for a new company called Love Windows. I’ll let you come up with your own ideas.
A bad couple of weeks
There’s no doubting that this has been a bad week or two for the window industry as a whole. It does seem a little while since court cases like this have been in the media about our industry. Many of us have been trying hard to keep our heads low and do good work for home owners. Personally, I believe that in recent years our sector has earned back a little bit more respect from home owners. I don’t think we’re as hated as we once were.
These recent cases though may set us back. Millions of people read both the BBC and Mirror websites, of which the recent Safestyle and this case were reported on. It’s going to ripple through social media and do untold damage. Whether it actually shocks people is another matter. Companies like this don’t have the sort of high-end reputation.
Still, it’s been a poor run of news, and it only demonstrates further that pressure selling tactics have to be outlawed. Not just in the window industry, but across business as a whole. It preys on the elderly, the vulnerable and those who are too trusting to question what they are being told. Any decent person would know that to take advantage of those sorts of people with pressure and hard-sell methods is plain old wrong. It does not justify the sales person winning a sale.
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