wyhr.orgWendy’s World

About two years ago we decided to upgrade our 1973 wood windows to save on energy and open more windows (we were missing a lot of screens). We had Home Depot and Morris Windows & Siding come for a sales call. Both had a fancy light that they aimed at the window to demonstrate the energy savings. Both had pretty pictures. Home Depot cost half of what Morris Windows did, but large companies aren’t always terrific to work with (hello automated telephone system). I remembered that I used to write my informative speech about Morris Windows. I immediately found my notes. Morris Windows was local and had been in the business for 20+ years. The customer service (i.e. the fact that I could talk to the person who was installing my windows about any issues I had) was what sold me and why we went with Morris Windows.

Turns out, they weren’t so great. First, Dave & I had to stay home (thank goodness for working from home and SDO’s) for three days. One day was for the workmen to come by and measure (since they didn’t trust the measurements the sales guy took when he was at our house), the second day was for installation of the windows, and the third day was for them to replace a non-functioning window and to clean up the mess they made. What do I mean by mess? They totally scraped the molding around the window and messed up our paint job on the walls underneath. Plus they did a crappy caulking job on the holes they put in the window molding (buncha jerks!).

That brings me to today and why I’m writing. We already had to stay home three days and we weren’t totally impressed with their performance so when we noticed one of our windows wouldn’t stay up when we opened it, we ignored it. Fast forward two years – I go to call Morris Windows & Siding and get an operator saying, “This line has been disconnected”. Uh-oh. I go on-line to search for their number because maybe it changed, nope! When typing in morriswindows.com, I keep getting routed to Roeland Home Improvement. I read a few message board posts about Morris Windows going out of business. Not so good. I call Roeland and yes, Morris Windows & Siding is out of business. I guess 20+ years of business doesn’t guarantee they’ll be around forever. Oh and by the way, I’ve called Roeland twice to help with this window and they’ve yet to call me back (taking after the other jerks).

Dilbert’s Sunday strip reminded me of this event in our lives: