يوميّة بيتيّ تجديد أطراف

Having finally received the phone call from the store that they had received the measurements taken by their employee (or contractor), we went to the store to place our order for our new exterior replacement door.

Once we selected the door we were given a quote which we expected to be near what the flyer in the local paper had indicated it cost for a new front door.

Sometimes we are so silly. Or, sometimes we learn so much about the renovation ‘game’.

The price in the paper was, it turned out, not including all of the ‘extras’ that one needed. If you assumed that you just wanted a door that you would hang on the existing frame where the current door was hung, you would be closer to the truth of the situation, price wise.

Our final price was about double the prices in the flyer, after the 20% discount.

In addition to the door with the full glass insert and the side lights with the same full glass insert, the additional charges included the following (taken directly off of our invoice):

• [Factory] Painted exterior (other wise, the door would be installed with a primer paint] 
• Metal cladding, cladded jamb, brickmould loose (2 piece)
• Jamb
• Basic installation
• Removal and disposal of old door and frame
• Installation of the sidelites

As for the 20% discount? Well, another lesson learned was to stand up, respectively, for your rights if the you believe the store employees are wrong. Just because they work at the store all the time does not mean they don’t make mistakes.

Once I got the total bill to bring to the checkout I did not see any listing of the 20% discount that we were assured we would receive. So I asked. The store employee assured me that the price did include the 20%.

An old trick I learned when I used to be an auditor was to ask to see the pricing of the items without the discount. It didn’t matter to me what I was shown. It could have been an invoice for a similar door from another customer who did not receive the discount. It could have been the order book that the store has from the manufacturer of the door. I wanted to see the actual calculations of the 20% with my own eyes.

About 45 minutes later, after several phone calls by the store employee to one or more people, after several trips to her file cabinet to pull out past orders and order books, she returned to say that in fact we had not received the discount.

When she presented the adjusted invoice it was still not a full 20% less than the pre-discount invoice we had first been given. When I asked about this, I was told that the discount did not apply to certain parts of the invoice such as installation, removal of the old door and the like.

While there was no mention of these exclusions in the flyer which first brought us to the store and I should have complained, I didn’t. I admit, I was too worn out of the experience.

OK, we could finally leave the store having ordered and paid for our door. When I say ‘paid for’, I mean that it went on our store credit card. You do know that the 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, and so on no interest / no payments promotions of big box stores are usually from the date of order and not from the date of installation, right?

I didn’t like that either, but I was told that there was nothing the store could do. It was the credit card company’s policy. So, we actually would have about 10 months, not 12 months no interest and payments if one starts the clock on the installation date.

I was not pleased but it is what it is (or so I thought).

We waited the 7 weeks that we were told to expect for our door to arrive and then arrangements would be made for the installation.

So we waited.

To continue with the next article in this series, simply select this link to Part 4 - The Waiting Game.