Thomas Sanderson

exemploy

exemploy wrote: »

OK here it is above and some more below - sorry for the delay !!
...and if you are the MD of TS...go and f... ....self...you owe me money still.....
However....I no longer need it and have a car like yours hahahahha

Right....here we go :

The furniture is not free it's.....paid for by......the customer !!! hahahahahahaha !!
It ramps up the invoice value and pays everyone a few more quid in commission.

If you don't want it the designer takes it off and low and behold...the price drops....watch the wording of the designer when you refuse it.
ASK to see the laptop as it's being done.

In fact here's a handy tip for everyone....

Once you get to the end of the process and the designer has his figures.....ask for the ' CTRL H ' ( control H ) price and ask to see it....it's the lowest price the designer can offer and he can even ring the manager and have this reduced still further.
Designer earns no money at ' CTRL H ' btw....if your feeling sorry for him !!! Surely not....so once again then....point to the door and take control.
The manager may be eating into his own commission below CTRL H too - try that...should be funny and worthy of a You Tube post.
The designer will empty the contents of his bowel on the sofa if you mention it.....and I may need to emigrate

Put Polythene sheeting on the sofa before he or she arrives then....

WARNINGS.....

For the men.....don't be mesmerised by the cleavage or thigh flashes of the female designers...wives be aware of this possibility too please.
For the single men.....this could be a very expensive evening with little reward...lolololol

My husband thinks I've made a mistake revealing all this but frankly I don't care.
My solicitor friend thinks it would be in the public interest if unsuspecting buyers knew of the potential pitfalls first.
The Banks have been exposed, so has the News of the World so why can't unscrupulous selling machines like TS suffer the same exposure ?
Sales will surely drop if I go public in the press etc so it's not really in their best interests anyway.
Wish Max Clifford was free to talk right now...I'd like to talk to someone like him.
The Sun newspaper would buy this I'm sure....there's no lies in here so it's not slander...I checked that already

Good luck to all you buyers then.....get the price right and you'll not only have exclusive, fab looking, functional window styling's but they'll also last longer than anyone else's

See......I sold them again.....can't help it
I have them here and love them

Paulmartin

Guys
Remember the sales people don't get a basic wage, use there own car and petrol. They need you to sign with them to earn commission, if you call next day they get nothing for all there hard work.....

trisontana

That just shows what sort of company they are working for. Any decent company would pay a decent wage, with a small commission top-up. Just paying commission encourages dodgy work practices,

virtual228

Thomas Sanderson blinds are good but customers beware when you get the sales person around they do employ some dodgy selling practices.
Pretending to ring the manager for extra discount, or to reserve the last batch of fabric on sales - putting pressure on the customer and telling them it might be sold later on that day - never is !!
Discount for flexible payments or carbon discount all rubbish made up to con the customer.
Let them give you the price , after the 342 promotion ( which has been on the last 3 years ) then take 50-55% off - that gives you the price that they will sell for
The company are stuck in the days of conservatory selling , mark it up high and then discount until you think your getting a good deal.
Poor practices - and as I worked for the company I know some of the top sales people take advantage of the older client on many occasions and then bragging about it in meetings -

Evangelist

I cannot tell you how useful this forum was for me today. My wife had been enticed by the 342 offer when visiting the Ideal Home Show. She was out when the two reps turned up (1 trainer and 1 trainee). 2hours of telling us about the company, showing the product, measuring, explain how bad the competition's Chinese origin products are, how badly made they are etc etc. Standard fare. As people they were very very nice. No grumbles.

I was ready for a high price when the 'free gift' was a garden dining set costing about £600 to £1000 based on what I can see in stores.

The price, my goodness the price! 3 times the previous highest! We told then no way. After a few minutes the trainer turns and I am sure did the CTRL H on the price. Hey presto 33% off. No further deduction offered.

So no complaints about sales tactics other than its the standard double glazing door sales person thing of old.

In exemploy's mind how much more than the precious highest would be a reasonable uplift for such a "premium" product made in UK?

MCF

I think I luckily escaped this Thomas Sanderson selling scam this morning. Although the salesman was very polite I was surprised at the ridiculous price, more than my double glazed windows! I did expect him to start the discounts though as I once worked as a designer for sharps so I remembered the techniques used to get prices down, they were still too high though. This chap started telling me a story about how he had a wide catchment and had some extra discounts on those accounts he could tap into for me and after a couple of go's dropped the price by £2000. It was just too insincere and I told him I couldn't make a decision. At one point though, I might have gone for it, the pressure is there, despite them saying there is no pressure, it's just done in a way you wouldn't clearly see. For me it was the expectation that I would pay thousands to a man I had just met and couldn't ever get that offer again. It's very predatory and not good sales for long term customer satisfaction, but I expect they don't care about future sales from customers as they fleece them so thoroughly they couldn't afford it again, especially if the whole house has been done. Having said that the product was good but certainly did not warrant the ridiculously inflated prices, THEY ARE JUST BLINDS FOR GOODNESS SAKE! Not a window or door which affords safety and warmth etc. I might just stick a bed sheet up ! Only joking, john Lewis were also ridiculously priced £100 per window just for fitting, I will do it myself or get a local fitter to do it for a fraction. If I had bought the blinds and read this thread I would be having nightmares and that awful sinking feeling....

Driver8

Paulmartin wrote: »

Guys
Remember the sales people don't get a basic wage, use there own car and petrol. They need you to sign with them to earn commission, if you call next day they get nothing for all there hard work.....

Learn to spell correctly!

exemploy2

Ok here's some more inside information, on Thomas Sanderson.

Let's start with the window stylings department, a lot of the products are not exclusive, they are primarily made by Hunter Douglas, so check in John Lewis if you get a price on an unusual blind that you've not seen before.

I agree with exemploy, the shutters, are exceptionally good, and about the best on the market, the Chinese shutter does not come close to the quality, although don't get taken in by the "solid wood" line the sales staff use, they aren't.

The conservatory blinds, are again, the best on the market, at least the pleated ones, the plastic shutters in a conservatory are hideous, and the pinoleum is bog standard for the industry.

Here is how to get the best out of your sales visit, you can save more using this method even than the control H trick.

Firstly, there are fabrics on discount, these alter and change, and the sales staff have no ability to move on the discounts, so if a solartex is 30% off, and another similar one is 5% off, there is no ability for the designer to change that discount, it is as far as he's concerned set in stone.

Where you can save is by savvy use of the 3 for 2 offer. Don't buy roof and windows together under any circumstances. Find the 3 largest blinds in the roof at first, then buy them in multiples of 3. So for example, you have 6 powered roof blinds at £1000 each before discount, and 6 at £700 before discount. That gives you 4 free blinds, so they would give you £1400 of free blinds.

If however you buy them in two sets, you would get 2 @ 1000 and 2 @ 700 giving you an extra discount of £2000. Then you would buy the lower half of the conservatory using the same method, but the you would probably end up buying them in one go.

Granted this would take a few appointments, but this is designed to get you the biggest savings.

Ok, so lets pretend that after the 3 for 2 discount, and the fabric discount, you are left with a price of £7000. From there, the designer can take 20% discount, leaving him on full commission of 12.5%

Below that, for ever 2% he gives away he will lose 1% dropping to an obvious 0% at 25% discount. So in realistic terms £7000 - 45% is the lowest he can go to, and he'll walk away pennyless.

I completely agree with the remarks of exemploy re the telesales departments, I'd turned up to jobs where the "conservatory" was a run down shack, or a couple of 20 year olds with a new home they'd just bought.

We would get sent to conservatories costing £1500, 100 mile round trips at 8pm for jobs that any person could realise would never, ever sell.

TS if you're reading this, I've left recently, sorry to my friends that I'm doing this, but I'm sick of seeing fantastic products being smashed into the ground by the management attitude. It used to be "fun" to work for TS, but God, it went downhill fast.

Message is, if you can afford them buy them. You don't get an Aston for Ford money, do your research, when the designer walks in, tell them you're happy to deal tonight if the price is right, don't make the guys do round trips to collect an order 2 days later, do it and cancel it if you wish.

You wont get better pleated blinds, you'll get cheaper, but you buy at your peril.

I suppose the message here is simple, TS do a fantastic, hand made product, but the management attitude, the way the telesales department throw any god awful crap in the designers way, doesn't make sense. TS if you want to you sort out your RPA (return per appointment), start off by sorting out telesales.

Hope you're having a pleasant summer Sandra.

exemploy2

You'd get four free blinds at 700 giving a total of 2800 if you use the two appointments you'd get a total discount of 3400.

Dunawori

We recently purchased a blind from Thomas Sanderson. However, we were badly advised about the way the blind operated and it has turned out to be unusable.
We were sold a cafe type blind (mainly used in conservatories) for a tall, difficult to access, landing window. The salesman told us that a remote would be too expensive for just one blind and that we would have to have all the electrics wired in, messing the walls up. With that in mind we decided against it, so he advised that we would need to use a pole to operate the blind.
However, on the day of fitting the pole had not arrived and when it came the day after, we found the it was impossible to operate, as you have to have the pole at a length of >2 metres and get the angle right whilst standing on stairs, backing up the stairs as you go, keeping the blind straight!!!!!
As my wife was on crutches when the salesman and fitter came and we had not been told all this complicated procedure, we rang the salesman to explain. He said he would look into it. A week later we had to ring customer services because he did not ring back. Several weeks later and calls to customer services, the salesman texted to say that you would ring later that day. That evening we got a text saying there was nothing he could do as we had signed and paid for the blind. (£703)
Eventually we got put on to the manager and after waiting 2 more weeks, he has just told us that we would need to pay a further £400 to get a new blind with battery remote.
We feel that £1103 is an extortionate amount for a blind of 88cm x 130cm made of a thin pleated white cafe style fabric.
We have asked for a refund and for them to come and remove the 'offending' product and have been told that it has to go to someone higher, to make that decision.
How many more weeks can this take??
Watch this space.........!!!