$100 Right Out The Window!

I mentioned a few posts back that our front picture window had developed a pretty nasty crack in it. Since I have zero time to even try replacing this chunk of glass, my wife started calling around to get some glasers out to quote the project.

Whoops! This is Fayetteville, a magical place where contractors cannot be bothered to come out and quote jobs. We've been down this road on a couple of other projects, so at least we're somewhat used to such indifference by now.

Finally, on Thursday morning we were able to wring a quote out of the people from AAA Glass. In addition to the big picture window, there was also a storm window in the family room that needed a similar repair. They quoted us $240 for both windows.

When I called Michelle at lunch time she relayed this info and also said she scheduled AAA to come out and do the job Monday morning. We both agreed it was a "tad pricey" but since AAA was the only company to respond to our plea, we might as well do it sooner rather than later.

That was Lunch time.

By the time I came home for Dinner, someone from ALLSTATE GLASS had come out and looked us over. They'd get back to us with an estimate, they said.

As Michelle had to work from 8:00AM until 8:00PM on Friday, she suggested I call ALLSTATE the next morning and see if they had the price quote ready. The idea being that if they were significantly lower than AAA, we'd cancel our Monday gig and go with the lower bidder.

On Friday morning I dutifully called ALLSTATE to see if they had the quote ready.

"Oh, yes, sir, Mr. Davison," the reply came. "We can fix both windows for you for $140."

"Great!" I replied. "When can you come out?"

"We do most of our residential repairs on Tuesdays, so we'll put you down for then."

"All righty! We'll see you Tuesday."

I called Michelle at work to relay the good news that we'd be able to spend one hundred fewer dollars on this project than we originally expected.

"Oh, that's great!" she replied. "Call Harvey at AAA GLASS and cancel our Monday appointment."

I immediately called AAA GLASS and got Harvey on the line. I explained that my wife had scheduled them to come out and do some work for us on Monday morning, but we have to "reschedule."

After some phumphering with his computer system, he finally found the work ticket (Yep, nobody can spell "Davison!" It always goes into the system as either "Davis" or "Davidson!")

"OK, here it is, Mr. Davison, "said Harvey. "I've cancelled out Monday and put down that you'll call to re-schedule."

I thanked the nice man and hung up with the glow one can only feel from "saving" $100 on glass repair work. Sure glad that's taken care of! (Hey, what's that foreboding music I'm hearing in the background?)

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At lunch time on Monday, I called Michelle to see how her day was going.

She sounded, oh I don't know... flummoxed. Here's why:

The ALLSTATE GLASS office called at 8:20AM to say that they could fit in our glass repair that morning. They'd be over around 9:00AM to get started. Cool - a day early and $100 short!

Michelle went into fast-forward mode. She got dressed. She got Mariel dressed. She rounded up the cats and locked them in a bedroom.

Right on cue, the glass repair truck pulled up and the contractors went to work.

A few minutes later a second truck pulled up.

Yep - the crew that had shown up first and was already replacing the glass was AAA GLASS. You know, the $240 guys who were NOT supposed to have come out after I had called and cancelled their service call!

The ALLSTATE GLASS folks were kind of, shall we say, perturbed. One of the guys apparently started waving the $140 quote in my wife's face.

Michelle was mortified that she hadn't noticed that the first truck was from AAA GLASS and all she could do was apologise to the ALLSTATE guys.

Well, the AAA guys finished the job, we paid the extra $100 and life goes on.

One of these days maybe, just maybe, we'll catch a break on this sort of thing.

Maybe.