The plan was to do some shopping first at Tesco and then have lunch at Glebe Farm on the A14. When I got to the care home only my Mum came down. My Dad had been to the dentist earlier and was still feeling a bit groggy and uncomfortable. Mum and I went to Tesco where she splurged on clothes, and then we headed, in a heavy shower of rain, to Glebe Farm.
Unfortunately, there was a long wait for lunch so we gave up and drove into Kettering with the idea of going to the 1940s cafe for something to eat. However, I couldn't even get parked, so we gave up on that idea and decided to go to Costa. On the way, we saw McDonald's so I suggested lunch there, which went down very well with my Mum!
I keep forgetting it's the Easter holidays and everyone seems desperate to get out and enjoy their free time! We enjoyed our lunch and it was a real treat for Mum - she even ate most of her meal! I dropped her back off and went home to await the arrival of an Anglian Windows representative.
We need four of our windows replaced: the front living room bay window, our bedroom window which the winds howls through, and Sophie's bedroom window which we can't open at the moment, as well as a small window in our en-suite. The windows are 20 years old, so we can't really complain, but it's just another expense to face!
As I was pottering about, Sue came to say hello and it was great to stand and have a chat with her for a while. After she'd gone, the salesman from Anglian arrived, and I showed him what we wanted to replace. He was quite derogatory about our existing windows and said that our builders had installed the cheapest they could... I wasn't keen on this as they'd been fine for the last 18 years. It was just recently we'd begun to notice them failing.
After having a good look we sat in the kitchen and he began his sales spiel. Keith was with me in the kitchen but he seemed to be in a bad mood and wouldn't really say much! After a lot of faffing about with his two iPads and his phone, he showed us what the new windows would look like and then went through all the technical stuff about what the windows were made of, how secure they were, and how draught-free they would prove to be for the next 35 years.
Then came the quote. I was expecting him to go away, prepare the price and email it to us, but no, he was able to do it straight away. The initial price he quoted us was high, but with various "offers" such as us filling out a survey, having a board outside the house, and putting something on Facebook, the cost came down quite considerably...
I wanted to talk to Sophie about the windows and not make a decision there and then, but obviously, this man (who drove a big, shiny Mercedes), had the gift of selling and closing the deal, as we agreed there and then... We paid a deposit on Keith's credit card, I signed the forms and that was it... Had we done the right thing?
After he'd gone I began to regret being so hasty. There were two things I really didn't like about him - the fact that he thought it was acceptable to slag off our existing windows and say they were shoddy, and the way he kept dropping the price as if the initial cost was hugely inflated. This put me in a bad mood for the rest of the evening.
Sophie was surprised by our decision but accepted it. The work couldn't be done until August so she would have to face a hot summer of getting ready without the windows opening. We made dinner, which was a real pain as everything we cooked stuck to the pans, putting me in an even worse mood! It was not a good evening!
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