Castle: The Offensive Window People

Hello,

I called "Castle: The Window People" today responding to a promotion flyer I received in the mail. My mother in law saw a bay window that she really liked and wanted to get a price quote on it. She asked me to call because her English is limited.

When I called I explained to the representative that we saw a nice window and would like a price quote on it. "Sure," she said. "I'll just need to ask you a few questions." I then began to give her my mother in law's information to arrange an appointment for a serviceman to come out and give a quote.

About halfway into answering questions, she asked of there was a "Mr. Father in law." I said no, because there is not. Instead of continuing with the appointment she kept asking about the "Mr. Father in law." I said, "That's none of your business." The family suffered a tragic tearing apart over the last year, and explaining to a service rep. the circumstances is goddamn offensive.

She indicated she was trying to help me, but would not assist me unless I explain and provide more information about "Mr. Father in Law". She then asked if my mother in law was widowed. I told her I was going to call Home Depot instead.

Is it any of my business if the service rep. is single, married, divorced, or widowed? Of course not.

Brutally offensive.

Comment On This

On or about February 26th 2009, �Tekoa D�. of Massachusetts called in to request an appointment to discuss windows for his mother in law�s house. During the conversation Tekoa became upset because we had asked him the first names of the owners of the house where he would like to receive the estimate. Please note that sometimes (although rarely) people will call to receive an estimate on a relative�s house. Often times, the conversation seems awkward because the person often does not know the name of the town where the house is located or what types of products that the home owner is interested in.

In addition, we receive 100�s of calls a day and a percentage of them are not legitimate. We have kids create prank calls. We have strange people that call up and breathe heavy into the phone. All of these types of calls have to be sifted through and organized.

The representative was simply asking Mr. Tekoa who was the names of the people who where interested in the windows so that it would be easier to discuss the project with him and so that we know who we are meeting with.

When someone calls in to ask about windows for �their� house and the person seems confused when we ask them how many windows they need or what town they live in, that call 99.99 percent of the time is a bogus call.

In addition, we do favor the fact that Mr. Tekoa called on his mother in law�s behalf. We actually prefer to meet with as many people as we can when we visit a house and we do welcome relatives and friends to any appointment that we set. We find that people are often happy to have a friend at the appointment to bounce ideas off of.

We apologize if Tokoa felt offended by our representative. We did look into his concern and the following details how the recorded conversation developed. We do not see how Takoa would have been �brutally offended� by our representative, but we emphasize with his concern.

So as we look back into the conversation, here is how the call progressed.

Marketer: Okay, now you are saying �the house.� Is this the house where you live? (Now this may seem like a strange question, but the marketer needs to know if the address they have recorded on the response card is the address that we are meeting the customer. Let�s suppose that the customer did not live there. Then a follow up question would be �Is there anyone that resides at the location?� Now, the marketer is not �prying,� the main concern here would be whether or not the electricity is turned on at the house. If there is no electricity, then the appointment would have to be set during the daytime as opposed to the nighttime.

Mr. Tekoa. No, it is my mother in laws house.

Marketer: Okay, is that Mr. and Mrs.

Mr. Tekoa: No I am not the Mr. it�s my mother in law.

Marketer: Chuckles, no I got that much � You said it is your mother in law�s house, I'm asking if it�s her and your father in law

Mr. Tekoa: That�s none of your business..

Marketer: Oh, well, I�m just trying to get an idea of who we are meeting with.

Mr. Tekoa: I told you that it was none of your business

That is the crux of the conversation and the issue at which the caller is getting upset with.

Perhaps the marketer should have shied away after she got the first �It�s none of your business,� But from the pace of the call, it seems as though she thought that Mr. Tekoa was confused and she was trying to explain herself. In the same vein, we don�t feel as though Takoa was being intentionally deceptive. Possibly both parties mis-understood each other.

Either way, we feel as though Mr. Tacoa was overly sensitive to a concern that the marketer had no idea about.

After this caller posted this letter to the internet, he also forwarded a complaint letter to our company e-mail. He had mentioned the call and asked that a manager or owner call him back. He explained that his father in law was recently in a car accident and it was a sensitive topic for him. Upon receiving the e-mail, We called him immediately. The time elapsed was about 2 minutes. He was shocked to hear from us so quickly and we apologized for the confusion. He did accept the apology and we explained to him that we were only trying to fill out an estimate request form and to find out who it was that we are to be meeting with. He understood and we shared a few laughs. He asked if we would still like a �shot at the job.� And we told him to call anytime that he wanted and we told him that we thought it would be great if he could be at the appointment too (if he wanted). The conversation ended on a positive note.

With that being said, we am very shocked to see this complaint on-line.

The funny thing is that another respondent on another site where Takoa posted the same complaint mentions that he saw a similar complaint with a similar e-mail about ANOTHER window company. While we don�t think that re �set-up� we cannot completely rule this out. After all, about 90% of the types of baseless arguments turn out to be a competitor of ours. The letters usually magically disappear when we respond.

But with this letter, there is an IRONIC twist

After reading the other respondent�s post about, we decided to look into the concern.

Tekoa mentioned that he worked at a real-estate firm. Just for �ha-ha�s� sake, we called his place of employment and requested information on one of his rental properties. Interestingly enough, the agent, Dino, I spoke with asked me my name. And then asked me if I where married. I told him that it was �none of his business.� He persisted in explaining that the landlord would like to know who is going to be staying there. I snapped back, (in a manner that my Tekoa did). �It�s none of the landlord�s business who is going to be staying there.� The representative at the real-estate company was clearly annoyed and confused. I left my number, but I haven�t heard back from him.

Here is the name of company if you would like to test the theory yourself: City Realty Group.

Tekoa asks in his letter, �Is it any of my business if the service rep is married divorced windowed?�

I don�t know Tekoa. Is it? Apparently so.

Perhaps I should post a complaint called �CITY lack of reality REALTY� online. Maybe I should send letter to the company demanding to speak with the owner of the company. One thing is for sure. The owner or City Realty would not call me back as quickly as I got back to Tekoa.

Obviously, we are being sarcastic in the last paragraph. We do take all of our customer�s concerns very serious. We just don�t feel as though this one warrants a post on an internet complaint site.