Double glazing company won't talk to wife unless husband is present?

[PrettyPickle]

Just been at my friends house and there was a knock at the door. It was a young lad canvassing for work for a double glazing firm. My mate is interested in having a couple of windows replaced and would be interested in a quote. The young lad asked when her husband would be home and she explained he worked away from home and she dealt with all stuff like this.

He explained that the husband had to be present. She asked why as the house is in her name only and has no mortgage and she would be paying for the windows in cash (not finance) from her money, not her husbands. She explained it was her 2nd marriage and he rented his home out. Well my mind was boggling about why she should have to share this info.

The young lad said he understood but his guidance was that the husband had to be present to allow it to progress. She asked why her husband, why not the three adult kids who also lived in the home and actually had a bigger stake in it as its their inheritance. He seemed perplexed but said that is how it works. My mate thanked him and said that she understood he had to follow the rules so thanks but no thanks.

Apparently this has happened before and whilst she would discuss it with her husband as part of their daily life, she didn't need him to be present, it was her decision, not his.

10 minutes later he returned saying he had explained to the office and they said it would be OK as it was all her property, so they agreed to ring at 4pm. My friend said if they brought up the subject of her husband needing to be present she would not be happy.

4pm came, someone rang and they said her husband had to be present. She explained the earlier conversation and that her husband had no say in the house (they have this legally tied up as they both have kids from a previous marriage) but he was adamant that they could not attend without her husband being present.

Now we both would get this to a certain extent if he was an owner of the property or was contributing to the home improvements but he is not.

Vote:

YANBU for refusing to have her husband present
YABU for her not understanding her husband needed to be present

OP’s friend told the rep she was making the decison, that the house is in her name. There is no “way” to go, the person with the money was right in front of him.

I had the same thing happen to me. They wanted us both to be there to get a quote. I assume it’s because they want to get a sale out of you then and there and that’s why they want both of you there to make sure that happens. It is so annoying and just wasn’t possible for me to arrange for both of us to be there and in the end I figured it is just too annoying to deal with this company and got a quote from someone else.

It’s not the same situation.
OP’s mate said she was the home owner (sole name). There is no both!

It's a common high pressure sales tactic, nothing more.

Much easier to do a hard sell for windows/ a car/ or whatever if both the people who need to agree to it are in the same room at the same time. Ditto the "I can given you 10% off but only today" tactic and the "someone else is about to buy this car" tactic. It's all about reducing the scope people have to really think about things before signing on the dotted line.

There is a significant amount of evidence to suggest that for any type of sale if a person is given the time to "go away and think about it" or "discuss with my partner" they are much, much less likely to commit to the purchase.

Why would you give all that detail to a random that just knocked your door? 🤣

Shit I voted wrong one. Of course her husband shouldn’t have to be there.

A guy I worked with who WFH had the reverse experience.

It's to avoid being strung along only to be told "You need to wait for my other half to get home".

Amusingly this guy got a bit shirty that "being a man" wasn't enough. Even when I explained it to him, he was "But I'm the breadwinner, so they should talk to me".

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

I had exactly this a few years ago, and went absolutely ape, as I was just getting quotes. It is so they can pressure you into signing there and then, they don't want a signed contract, and then the partner saying they don't want it and to cancel.

We had someone around once for a window quote. He wouldn’t even look at me, he dismissed my questions and genuinely thought my husband was the only one who could make a decision. Dh asked him to leave as he was so bloody rude!!

My guess is it is because the #1 reason their salespeople say that they are stopped from closing a deal is because the (potential customer) says "because I need to discuss it with my partner first".

It's probably less about "husband" and more about "partner".

Any company that uses this selling tactic is one of the ones who sits there going on and on and on and refuses to leave your house until you’ve signed and I’ve even called the police on a salesman who did this!

I once cancelled car insurance with diamond (that famous women's insurance brand) and the man on the other phone asked my twice if I would like to check with my husband who was named on the policy as an additional driver but it was neither his car, policy or money paying for it.

Also had a double glazing salesman saying he could come back when my husband was home after I told him we weren't interested🙄

The only way I would possibly be on board with this is if they had the same policy for a wife being present.
If not, there is no chance on this earth I would give them my business!

It doesn't matter whether they would demand that the wife was present too.

I would not be willing to purchase from a company that sought to apply such high pressure sales techniques.

If they are not confident that I will still consider their offer to be of interest after I have had the opportunity to reflect on it and/or discuss it with my DH, then it isn't really an offer that I would be interested in.

This drives me made and normally means they lose my business. I wonder if they would have told the husband his wife needed to be present ? I am guessing not

This. Tell them you know they won't allow you to discuss an expensive purchase with your life partner, and therefore can't be arsed with them. You want a quote, not a heist.

I've had this too. My dh worked away months at a time so their loss, I went elsewhere. I've also had it with a plumber who came to look at a leaky toilet. He wouldn't do the work until he'd spoken to my husband. I fixed it myself and the leak wasn't coming from where he said it was either!

I’ve read of the same discussion on here before. It happens more than any of us would want to think about!

How bizarre and what a massive assumption. What if there was a wife or partner instead of a husband

Anglian Windows came to my house and the same happened. I told him to p off as he had lost a sale as it was me who had the funds and made these decisions

This is archaic, they used to do this 40 odd years ago, but I have never heard of it nowadays.

Oh not this nonsense again.

Can anyone point me to the law that says that both (or more) owners of a house have to agree to have the windows replaced?

I suspect there isn't one.

This sort of thing is sexist nonsense (as well as not wanting one party to say yes and then the other party says no, but it doesn't matter anyway as you have two weeks to cancel any contract you sign at home and you don't need a reason).

I wouldn't give business to anyone canvassing at the door anyway.

Seems an odd decision - it'll piss off women and lose you custom, usually they can't wait to get money off you.

From experience, this isn't the kind of company you want to get round for a quote because they want both people present to get a contract signed then and there and will go through the double glazing salesman routine to get there. I had a knock on the door from a similar company and explained we'd be interested in a quote but weren't going to progress it until the new year. Appointment booked in, bloke came round and got out the brochures and then I realised he was going to do the tactics of pretending to call his boss to offer us an amazing discount based on the amazing location of our house for advertising their business. My husband was clueless so kept wandering off to talk to our daughter and the guy wouldn't carry on until my husband came back. Plenty of fake phone calls to his boss and then said they'd charge £4k for the door. We were like wtf and then he started to say what kind of discount would you order for and went down to £100 at which point my husband said no we said we aren't ordering now even for £100. The guy as he was leaving said thanks for wasting my time and I wasn't brave enough to say it was his stupid company wasting everyone's time as I said from the start we wouldn't be ordering then and there. We would always get several quotes before deciding. I read up on it later and the high initial price is so the discount feels like a great one but the salespeople get to keep whatever price they can achieve over the standard list price. And the £100 was so they could say you can have it for only £100 a month over so many months. Just avoid any company that says this kind of thing, it's a good way to screen them out imo.

I don't think it's this reason, I think it's the same male or female. They like husband and wife to be there so that they don't go through all the talk only for one partner to say 'I need to discuss it first with husband/wife'.