In light of the huge amount of home owner confusion left over by the demise of SafeGlaze in recent days, DGCOS has made live two pages on their website aimed directly at home owners with the aim of providing guidance and information on what to do post-SafeGlaze.
Both articles are long, so I’m not going to copy and paste them on here, but I will give you the summaries and links to each article. If you’re a home owner reading this and have been affected by the collapse of SafeGlaze, these are probably worth giving a few minutes of your time to.
Case study
The first of two pages published by DGCOS focuses on a home owner who has since had difficulties in gaining completion of remedial work since SafeGlaze went into administration. In the past couple of weeks I have had a lot of emails from home owners asking what they should do to get their remedial works completed. Whilst frustrating for those involved, it also hints towards the level of workmanship the company was carrying out. So many customers left with unfinished work or work that needed repairing says it all.
To read the case study and the advice given follow this link:Â https://www.dgcos.org.uk/news/safeglaze-uk-in-administration-consumer-case-study
What is mentioned in this case study and the comments made by the home owner highlight an achingly large problem our industry still has with standards, reputation, professionalism, legislation and overall attitude towards home owners. I won’t carry out that rant here, it will be too long! But industry readers should take a serious read of the home owner’s comments and understand how smoke and mirrors from a company can lead to such a poor customer experience. Home owners reading this should also read this and understand that as with any other big ticket purchase, doing your home work, I mean really doing your home work is vital before placing an order with a company.
Possible protection
The second article goes into detail about the various purchasing methods used by home owners and what forms of protection they offer. It also states which IBG company they were using and what self-certification scheme they were signed up to.
If you’re a home owner this one is for you:Â https://www.dgcos.org.uk/news/safeglaze-uk-in-administration
I fear for the number of home owners left without IBGs simply because SafeGlaze failed to actually do the paperwork. What should happen, which is what we do at our place, is once the home owner places the order, the IBG is activated as it is also protection for deposits. Once the contracted works are complete then the insurance backed guarantee (IBG) paperwork can be completed, sent off to be registered and that’s that. It appears that this likely wasn’t happening for at least some customers, which explains the scenario in the case study article.
In all honesty this whole thing angers me. I take great pride in doing my day job in helping to run the family business. Doing it in as professional manner as possible. Conducting all our affairs as they should. Then we see a company like SafeGlaze spring out of nowhere, use whatever means necessary to steal market share, and then run the business so poorly, with certain intents on the competition, and then to be left to go to the wall by those with decision making power, leaving hundreds of employees and thousands of customers in a mess. This industry is so poorly regulated, and it’s a scenario like this which only highlights it further. It’s not surprising that home owners have such a distrust for us in some quarters.
Credit to DGCOS for stepping in to provide this information. If you’re a home owner please take the time to read both pages, hopefully it will provide some guidance on what to do moving forwards.
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