English Rose Kitchen

So close and yet so far

Getting the home improvement loan
Stepping back a bit, I realise I’ve never told the sorry tale of how we’re managing to fund the project.

I bought the property 10 years ago during a slight dip in the market and just before the sustained house price boom of the late 90’s to the mid naughties, so we decided to re-mortgage to raise the money to renovate the flat.

Re-mortgaging
The was just before the credit crunch grew its head of steam so things were a little easier and as it turned out, by switching to a new mortgage company and to a lower interest rate, we effectively raised the entire home improvement loan while slightly reducing our repayments. It’s a tracker mortgage, just below the Bank of England base rate.

How I imagine the mortgage company’s lawyers to be

Bloody conveyancing lawyers!
The re-mortgage agreed, the fun began. You see lawyers for mortgage companies, estate agents, buyers and sellers of property have contrived to milk the arcane system of property ownership in this country for all it’s worth. To explain briefly, my property is a house comprising two apartments (OK, flats to us Brits). I live on the ground floor and, as is common in these situations, I share the freehold of the property with the owner of the upstairs flat, while each of us has a 99 year lease on our own floor.

I’ve lined up a van for Monday with a company whose website I look after, Tiger Tours. The plan is to go down and pick up the fridge first, then the kitchen units. Mr Poole says he’s fine all day long. Slightly-angry-woman (with the fridge/freezer) has turned into slightly-angrier-woman because I can’t pick up the American style fridge/freezer at the weekend. This is proof of Al’s theory that English Rose Kitchen fans are of a certain type and the rest of the world are of a certain other type.

Then Martin (nice chap) at Tiger Tours called to say that there’s a problem with the van that I’m hiring (a transit type thing), so would I mind taking a Splitter van instead? Tiger Tours specialise in hiring to bands (we’ve used them ourselves). This thing is a 9 seater behemoth with another few feet of storage at the back. The whole thing is 6.5m or 21′4″ long. I guess the fridge/freezer will go in the storage bit (which serves it right) and the kitchen units can be split between the storage and the seats. It’ll probably have DVD players and broadband and all sorts of stuff that’s complete overkill for the task, but Martin said they’ll give it to me for the price of the van I was going to get.

Remember Dave, the builder/decorator we met in the North Pole last week? He arranged to come round at mid day today. Dave couldn’t make it so he sent his partner instead. Unfortunately his partner’s name was a bit unusual so I didn’t quite catch it.

For the first time the process of describing what needs doing to didn’t seem like a chore. We’ve asked him to quote for the floor, the kitchen, lighting in the living room and the shower/steam room (probably the subject for another blog I should think).

He was the first person who seemed to just “get it”. He was totally unphased at the prospect of having to fit an English Rose kitchen and suggested that before we go ahead and restore the units we let them place them roughly so we can all see what we’re dealing with.

In brief, he filled us with as much confidence as Dave did when we first met him. Let’s see what his quote is like when he gets it to us in a few days’ time.

So here’s one of the reasons why we decided to fit our own kitchen.

This is the first time we’ve ever tried to get a kitchen fitted and yet, when it comes to dealing with sales people we feel like we’re old hands. You see, kitchen sales people all share the same script. To us it seems that it all started with Everest, the double glazing outfit, but that’s just because they’re the best exponents of the genre. In fact the first time I ever came across the technique was from Anglian, another company that sells double glazing.

The script is as follows:

1. You’re told what a lovely home you have (this is to warm you up for a later point)
2. They take your basic requirements.
3. They try to persuade you that your basic requirements are wrong and that these are the requirements you should have.
4. After much sleight of hand and apparent workings out on a piece of paper you’re handed a quote for (say) £29,000. Cue shocked expression on your face.

5. They then tell you that, for no specific reason, they can give you a discount of up to 40%, bringing the price down to £17,400.
6. They look into your eyes to see whether there’s any flicker of relief at this “discounted” price. If you weaken for a milisecond they pounce and try to seal the deal.
7. You don’t, so they reprise the “you have a lovely home” theory from point 1. This mutates into “Your home is an ideal show home” whereby they can  give you an additional 30% off if you agree to a sign in your front garden. Show the salesperson the door immediately if they tell you that you qualify because you’re on a corner or are close to a school, church or gym. The woman from Anglian nearly wet herself with excitement when I told her that I lived as close as a mile from the nearest church and a mere mile and half from the closest gym.
8. You still don’t bite, so they place a call to a mystery manager. The idea is that you’re supposed to witness them “negotiating” on your behalf, pleading that your case is special in some way. We like leaving them to it, watching them having an imaginary conversation from the other end of the flat.
9. The call ends with “He wants to speak to you”. The “manager” explains to you that the only reason they can offer such a good price is because they have a special promotion on that ends “today”. What an amazing coincidence!
10. The sales person presents you with a form to sign in two places as if you’ve already agreed. When you refuse, they explain that the first signature is just to say that you agree that they paid you a visit and that you “have” to sign. You don’t, but I did have one saleswoman implying a threat of legal action when I refused.

We always tell them them not to waste our time with these tactics, they always say that they don’t and then they always do.

Oddly enough we did get our secondary glazing from Everest, but we had an absolute rarity. A double glazing salesman with integrity who just told us the best price he could give us without any of the BS. Ray told Everest that we’d had bad experiences in the past an they sent along this guy. I knew we’d get along when he told as he used to be an A&R man who hated the record industry as much as he now hated the double glazing industry. He’s left Everest now, but I will gladly supply his contact details and a glowing reference to anybody who’s sick of robots.