I need a new window. I looked in the phone book. I saw an ad for Zenith Windows – I thought ‘I’ve heard of them, maybe they are good, I will get them round for a free no obligation quote.’
I rang Zenith windows they said they had to come round to quote. That seemed reasonable.
The guy who turned up was a sales rep and clearly not someone who knew much about windows or installing them. I politely listen to him for over an hour and then explained I had things to do and asked him to wrap it up. He pretended it wouldn’t take long. I was shown window samples which were made of odd things called ‘compounds’, the advantages of advertising Zenith in my window where painstakingly explained to me, a wonderful formula that kept the windows bright and shiny for ever was explained to me, many other things were explained to me and my protestations grew weaker and my mind felt numb, any will I had to live, slowly diminished.
Suggestions that he actually measure the window and give me a quote were brushed off with more explanations.
3 hours later he finally found a tape measure and eventually proceeded to quote a figure of £4690. In case of a sudden heart attack from his now brain dead victim he spent some time tapping into his big calculator and found he could he knock the price down to £3320. I said I had to think about it. He rang his boss and after a couple of phone calls they offered to replace the window for a new figure which he mysteriously wrote on his hand. He hyped it up for a few minutes and then said in a breathy voice ‘£1800’. I said I still had to think about it. After I paced up and down and opened the door in an enticing way, he finally left after scrawling on the form NEVER TO BE OFFERED AGAIN.

In future I will check blagger.com to find out about rubbish companies.