July 12: Threats and Deals

I took a good look at Angie's list website.  It turns out they do have a complaint resolution process.  They require you to file a "C" or worse report, then they send questions.  In order to qualify for the complaint resolution process, you must have tried to work the matter out with contractor.  Not yet actually having made ultimatum wrt delivery of concrete, I wouldn't qualify.

I sent message wrt my negative experiences around 10:30.

Maybe it was just coincidence, but then around 1pm Ronnie showed up for 5 minutes.  He dropped new clean wire mesh on my patio, and then took off.  I opened the door just as he was leaving.  He called me back a few minutes later.  He said he couldn't get concrete workers today, but would get them tomorrow.  He said he didn't want to call because he didn't want to wake me up.  I said in future he should call immediately if he couldn't show up.  (I remember telling him something like that before.)  I said that if he didn't show up or call tomorrow (July 13) I would start filing reports.  He said not to worry, we will take care of you.

*****

Around 2pm I called Progressive Solutions, the San Antonio dealer for Fleetwood Windows who had emailed and called about my order.  I told them I would be down at 3pm to put deposit on window.  I was told I needed 50% deposit.

Around 3:30 I found the Progressive Solutions building.  They were not part of larger building across the street as I had expected.  They have their own building.  The front door was locked, but the side door opened automatically.  I asked for my salesperson.

I asked about the shipping charge and was shocked to hear it was going to be $300.  I asked about time to delivery and they said 6 weeks.  At that point, I was beginning to think I should call this deal off, but the salesman wanted to show me some Fleetwood products.  He showed a 12 foot high pocket door which glides like magic.  I saw a cutout of an impressive window frame and asked about whether the thermal break material could fail.  He said that had never happened.  I asked if it was polyethylene and he didn't know.  There were no actual window samples.  I asked about the lubrication of the mechanism, whether it had a lubrication hole.  He went to his computer and printed out the Fleetwood care manual.  It does not mention lubrication hole, it appears you may need to squirt lithium grease into an exposed mechanism.  When I asked if mechanism could be replaced he said it could.

I told salesman the window was really important to this project because there would be no air conditioning, and that's why I wanted a casement window.  I told him I wanted a very strong window because I didn't want it to break off in the wind.  I mentioned that I had been originally planning to build shed with brick, but had to give that idea up.  I didn't mention that I also wanted to keep luxury window for that reason, so shed still has some kind of luxury feature.

Back at the front desk, I said that I thought $300 was an excessive shipping charge (for a small window).  He asked what I was thinking of, and I said $100.  I also said that 6 weeks was too long, I was hoping for something more like 4 weeks.  He went away for a couple minutes, and said he could reduce shipping charge to $150 by combining my order with another to save crating cost.  He said that they would lean on Fleetwood to keep delivery time as close to 4 weeks as possible, being that they had told me 4 weeks originally, and that they did a lot of business with Fleetwood.  He said they couldn't guarantee that because Fleetwood QC was very fussy and often rejected glass or other material at the last minute.  I agreed to those terms and paid $600 deposit.