Hello gentle reader and welcome to my little expose on the behaviours of Everest Home Improvements.
August 2013 I signed up with them, in good faith, to provide replacements for half of the windows of my house. It did seem a little expensive, but the salesman (who was actually a very nice man) assured me they would be able to provide "like for like" so as to preserve the character of the house that has been my home for 40+ years.
How wrong I was!
So if you're ever looking for double glazing or other 'home improvements', please please do yourself a favour and find someone else (and then get multiple quotes so that you know you're not about to be ripped off).
The last 21 months (to end of May 2015) have been a quite difficult period. Getting any information out of them has been quite a challenge and that which I have received has usually turned out to be either missing, incomplete or nothing like what I'd asked for in the first place.
For a html view of all the emails back and forth you can browse here - but be aware there are about 150.
For the FOUR letters I've written to their CEO (without much success) - these are the same files as sent (but with my address removed for spam protection):
This includes a full timeline up to that point, with pictures of what they'd produced and what exactly I'd been expecting | 1st December 2014 (not much change) | 25th March 2015 In response to seeing they'd manufactured the same mistake twice, then sent me pictures showing that. |
So that you can see what I've been complaining about. In 2013 I supplied their manufacturer with five scale drawings:
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| Instead of using all of these 'to-scale' and 'authorised for production' drawings, they took the original (below left) and using all their own initiative, did a bit of a hatchet job to 'make it fit' to turn it into this (below right) for January 2014. Since then they've claimed numerous times that they couldn't see what the problem was. |
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| Then a year later, Feb 2015, they come back with this, 'supposedly' remanufactured to the designs I had (again) given them: | ||||
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| Which is why I was not best pleased! Yet, given that they have also (on the second attempt), been able to produce around half of the units with the correct designs (as originally supplied by me and from their given measurements)... |
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| ...that, not only were some of those original measurements incorrect (which has now finally come to light and was obvious to me from receiving the first set of pictures), that someone within their organisation was aware of this, yet failed to pass this information onto their surveyor or myself back in 2013.
Which would suggest that the reason for this whole farce dragging on for nearly two years, has been known about within their organisation for all this time, which means it really is ALL THEIR FAULT! |
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Then to add insult to injury - for an itemised price list that I finally got them to send me in Feb 2015 (apparently it's not usual to supply customers with this important detail), even though I'd asked for details of 'at cost' pricing (which they had offered for the other half of the windows for the house) they sent me the RETAIL. Find that here
or on the right sidebar link.
What may surprise you, is that they believe a "hardwood exterior door" (for the kitchen), with frame, is worth a very surprising £3,198!
That's about twice the price of the hall windows with the bespoke leading design!
Yes, it's over THREE THOUSAND POUNDS, for a SINGLE door.
I found an equivalent with a quick google search (www-leaderdoors-co-uk if you're interested) for £280, including delivery - a finished, hardwood, double-glazed, exterior door. Similar alternatives are available at Wickes and B&Q for similar much-lower prices.
Feel free to spread the image below!
"Let's go Viral!" ;)
(right-click, 'save as...')
So let us begin our journey with a 3-minute version of "where it all went wrong" (if this were a video, we'd have the harp glissando's and wavy images right about now)...
August 2013 I signed up with Everest for them to replace half the windows in my house, including two stained-glass designs (leading), for which I supplied scale drawings to their manufacturer in October 2013 - to the measurements they originally gave me - (for which I was complemented "If only all their customers were like you, it would make our job so much easier").
January 2014 I received a couple of pictures showing the 'finished' designs. One was a near enough perfect recreation - because I had dealt direct with the manufacturer myself. The other was changed without my knowledge or authorisation, then manufactured and looks nothing like it was intended to. I wasn't happy, made a bit of a fuss and supplied them again with a full set of scale drawings.
It then took them until October 2014 and a couple of letters to their CEO for them to agree to re-manufacture the affected units (after telling me variously "you should get them in and fix it later", "you have to accept what we've produced", "we see no reason why you should have a discount", etc).
I'd asked back in Feb 2014 for "a full set of windows at a reasonable price" - their 'best offer' has been "complete the order and refund my deposit".
December 2014 they sent another surveyor out to see me (from Eastbourne!) and he measured up the rest of my windows. He also explained to me how 'management' don't really have a clue how their products are made, so I should stick with my assertions.
February 2015 they send me pictures of what they're supposed to have manufactured again, from the provided scale drawings, with (finally) an itemised price list. Now, not only are about half of the designs/units still incorrect (I'd sent four scale drawings, one for each size of panel), but I find out that for a single "hardwood kitchen door", they actually want to charge me £3198(!). I found an equivalent on the Internet for £280. After the fourth letter I sent to their CEO, I finally (a month later) received an email, from their legal dept, politely suggesting that their 'best offer' is still to "complete the order and refund my deposit".
I very much doubt they were given appropriate information and I've yet to hear anything useful back since from any other of their staff.
So even though they've taken so far 21 months and not been able to provide me with an acceptable product, they won't let me cancel (without further charge to myself). Their reasoning is that were I to be allowed to do so, they believe they would have no choice but to 'claim damages from loss of profit'. Yet they've still made no move to correct their very obvious mistakes.
I contacted the Which:Legal service, describing the situation and they informed me that legally, Everest should be considered to have already broken the contract under the "Sale of Goods and Services act 1982", by "failing to provide an acceptable product within a reasonable time properly", which seems fair enough to me.
As the customer, my interests are these:
* Have you provided me with the full and complete information I have requested so that I may make an informed decision? (No)
* Have you supplied me with pictures showing a full set of completed units with the correct designs? (No)
* Is this all within a reasonable timeframe? (No)
How they manage their manufacturing is really none of my concern.
All in all, it has been very stressful and I only describe it as dealing with a group if inept children who for some reason, believe they know what they're doing, but everything they do, demonstrates otherwise.
The order reference, should it help any, is ES1910AR.
Now, to bring us up to date, Saturday 30th May I received an email from Everests "Legal Services Manager" enquiring about us having made no progress.
This was after my last email to them on 13th May about "How you manage your manufacturing is not my concern. I just want you to produce all the units correctly"
Then on the Sunday I receved back an incredibly rude, obnoxious and dismissing email from the same person.
I'm not entirely sure whether he actually realised that everything he described there, detailed exactly how they'd managed to get everything so wrong, for so long.
This made me rather happy as it was the information I'd been asking for, for the past nineteen MONTHS!
My inline reply to that you can read here. You'll have to excuse the generic formatting, however I would imagine you can separate out my writing as it's the parts that isn't ranting at me as if I'd just pee'd on his head.
To summarise that, which I replied to the 'Legal Services Manager' on the morning of 1st June, bcc'ing every Everest email address I had, including the (guessed) CEO's, was this:
This whole back and forth of you people refusing to believe there was a problem, has been because I wasn't told something I should have been, by someone who wasn't aware of what the problem was either, but is now no longer with the company...
And it has taken 19 months for you to get me that information?..
Over which time your staff have been variously dismissive, rude, and claimed I'm just "dragging it out".
Really.
It's a comedy of errors completely of your own making.
You didn't even need to at the time send anyone out to my office, you could just have emailed me with the request.
We could easily have sorted this out then, if I'd just been told all you needed was a differently scaled drawing!!!
It's a five/ten minute job in Adobe Illustrator.
I would also suggest that your previous introductory paragraph (the one about 'remit, skillset and experience') was was in fact rather rude and irrelevant, given the circumstances - as it's now apparent that it's still Everest's fault for not properly communicating the described production problems to me back in October 2013.
I have to say, I'm very, very, disappointed and if there were a metaphorical naughty comer, you people would be there "thinking about what you've done" for a very long time.
I do hope you're going to make me a better offer, especially for the "exterior hardwood door" allegedly costing £3198(!)
I've attached this as a photo as a reminder. You'll likely also see it around on the Internet soon.
So you see, to paraphrase the old advertising tagline...
"Try the rest, never Everest!"