FAO: Lawrence Vaughan, Chief Executive

Anglian Home Improvements

30 July 2014

Dear Mr Vaughan

Re: Customer order number: 30046703

When I decided to have the front windows in my tenanted house replaced, I wanted a company
which would provide excellent service, value for money and would above all demonstrate a
commitment to high standards and consideration for those trying to reside whilst the work was
being undertaken.

I had visits from representatives from 3 companies, and eventually chose to engage the services of
Anglian Windows, partly because of the long standing reputation of the company, and secondly
because the representative who came to visit my house, was not at all pushy, he was informative,
helpful and inspired trust. It later transpired that he had worked with me many years ago when I
had been running a building firm with my ex-husband, a business I was involved with for some 20
years. I remembered that this man, Mr *****, had always provided excellent service and was a man
true to his word, so when he assured me that Anglian was a very good company, which operated
with integrity, honesty and was mindful of making the least impact on residents as possible, I placed
my order without hesitation. I was told the work would take around 3 days to complete:
approximately 1 day per window.

The experience I had of working with Anglian has been none of the above: in fact it has been a farce.
I have found that promises made by the installation team were not fulfilled, the office staff were
totally unaware of what teams were working on what assignments, they failed to pass on messages
or return my calls, paperwork was lost twice and your manager has been pushy and unprofessional.
As a result of the total chaos of the organisation, the entire process, from placing my order to my
paperwork being finally completed and work commencing was 5 months, ( from 14 December 2013
until 19 May 2014) and the installation took not 3 days, but 5 weeks to complete, during which time
my tenant was left with a gap under the sill in the front room, which ran for approximately 18 cms
and was completely open to the elements, for 3 weeks. During this time, numerous dates were
given for workmen to return to complete work, which passed with nothing done, numerous calls to
the local office were not dealt with and when someone finally did return my call, the only thing she
had to say was that she was chasing payment! This happened again a further three times, despite
my being assured that someone would contact me as soon as possible, to discuss my grievances.

I have been appalled by the attitude of your local manager, ******, who told me that any complaint
I have would never result in any compensation and that in some cases a sum of 50 and a bunch of
the flowers for the lady might be given as good will. The other evening Mr ***** came round
unannounced to my house to hand deliver the form to say that the work has been completed to my
satisfaction. He wanted me to sign it there and then for him to take away with him, but we had
recently discussed my complaint so he was fully aware that I am not at all satisfied. I informed him
that I have decided to go through the formal complaints procedure and raise my concerns with Head
Office, to which I was asked Look, what do you want to get out of this?. I could easily have found
his behaviour invasive and may have felt coerced into signing the satisfaction form, but I found him
boarish and I was very annoyed by his visit, but I am strong enough to have been able to stick to my
decision so he reluctantly left without the form: I fear that not all women may have responded in
this way. At no time on the numerous occasions when I was making my complaint known to local
staff was I informed that there is a standard formal complaints procedure which I should follow if I
wanted to make a formal complaint, and I consider this to be a breach of your terms and practice
standards.

So I began to ask myself, what do I want out of this?

Well firstly I want my concerns and grievances to be properly considered and dealt with and not
simply ignored or poo-pooed. You are a big company, with a big reputation to uphold and I really
dont think you would want to be regarded as unprofessional, disorganised, rude, dishonest,
dismissive and totally inconsiderate. I want you to reflect and consider the training, organisational,
procedural, managerial and accountability issues which this complaint raises, taking seriously the
way these impact not only on your company public profile, but also on the personal experiences of
those who simply want to buy some new windows and have them fitted according to the promises
they are made.

People have lives to lead most of your customers are probably in work or retired since they will
need to be able to pay for the work you undertake. This means that in the case of working people,
they will need to make arrangements for your team to come and as such will be taking days off from
work, or will be imposing on the favours of friends to ensure someone is there to allow access to the
house. In my case, my tenant took 3 days off work: on the first no one turned up at all, on the
second someone came at midday and left less than 2 hours later, and on the third again no one
came. They came the following day, so she arranged a friend to be there, but they left after half a
day with a window in place but propped up with a number of bricks completely missing, left the
scaffold up with the bricks simply sitting on it at the front of her home, saying that someone would
be back on Saturday to complete the work: of course no-one then turned up again until the middle
of the following week, however someone from your company did turn up on Sunday to try to sell her
some windows! The scaffold came down just over a week later but it would be a further 3 weeks
before the work was finally completed. She was of course asked to trust the workmen and to hand
over a key: I hope you can understand both her and my reluctance to do this since trust was not
something which was prominent in this experience.

I want you to ensure that your office staff ensure that calls are passed on to, and returned by, the
appropriate person, that questions are answered accurately, that messages are passed on and dealt
with, that work teams are co-ordinated and that key office staff are aware of work schedules and
personnel so that people can be kept up to date, quality of service can be assured and schedules are
actually kept to, so that failure to deliver on expectations, promises and schedules is actually
accountable. If schedules are unavoidably delayed or disrupted, accurate information needs to be
actively passed, on or at least readily available, to the client and also to the manager who is meant
to be overseeing and actually managing the team who are undertaking the installation: if your
manager is not managing installation projects, schedules and quality what is he/she actually meant
to be managing? In my case, it seems that no one in the office even knew when anyone had been
working at my property or indeed who had been there and this is an issue of great concern.

Bearing in mind my experience of working with Anglian, these are the assurances you give on your
information material and therefore the standard of service which I was expecting:




OUR PROMISE:
What you can expect from us

1. Well deliver the highest level of customer satisfaction at all times
2. Well treat your home with the utmost consideration
3. Well monitor progress and keep you informed every step of the way
4. Well put our full resource and experience into your order irrespective of its size or value
5. Well instal everything carefully and accurately
6. We provie watertight guarantees and continued customer service

How many of these promises were kept in my case?

So on reflection, I suppose I can only turn this question around and ask what does Anglian want to
get out of this? And what does your key representative, Mr *****, want to get?

I look forward to your urgent but considered response. Please do not fob me off with off pat
standard replies about compensation policy or such rubbish. I understand from your representative
that compensation is never awarded to complainants as if we paid money out to everyone who
complained, we would be handing money out all of the time I leave you to infer what you like
from this prize and somewhat baffling quotation!

Yours sincerely

*******