You do not know anything about windows.
Good. That is the correct amount to know.
Every week we hear from homeowners who are sitting on a broken window because they are convinced ordering the part is going to be over their heads. They have a rotted casement bottom or a failed seal or a sash that will not stay up, and instead of fixing it, they stall. Not because the repair is hard. Because they are not sure they can order it right.
Here is the thing. Your lack of confidence is rooted in a lack of knowledge. That is fixable, and it is not your job to fix it. It is ours.
What Actually Breaks
Before you order anything, it helps to know what you are looking at. The failures we see over and over are short list.
Rotten wood. Usually along the bottom rail of a casement sash, where water sat. This is the single most common reason a homeowner calls us.
Failed glass. Either the seal went and the unit fogged, or something went through it. Baseballs are undefeated.
Balance failure on double hungs. The window will not stay up. That is not the sash. That is the jamb liner, which people also call the track, or the springy things, or the balancers. All of those words are fine. We know what you mean.
Hardware. Crank handles, operators, locks. And here is where it gets expensive for people. We have watched homeowners replace entire windows because a crank handle broke. Depending on the part, that is a $50 fix. Maybe a hundred. It is not a ten thousand dollar fix.
Notice what is not on that list. The frame in your wall. In almost every case, it is fine. It is the sash that failed. Just replace the part that’s broken.
About That Lifetime Warranty
A lot of homeowners call us with a window that is supposedly covered. Then they find out it is not.
Whose lifetime? Your lifetime, or the company’s lifetime? Because when a manufacturer gets bought out or closes its doors, there is no entity left to honor anything. That is not a loophole. That is just how it works.
And even the companies still standing have a second exit. The warranty ends when they stop making that model. They discontinue a line, and suddenly there is no warranty part available, because there are no parts. But they will happily sell you new windows. Maybe even at a discount.
This is why we exist. If you own a Caradco, a Norco, a Pozzi, or one of the fifty other legacy brands that stopped making their own replacement parts, the original manufacturer is not going to help you. We still make them. That is the whole business.
We think we’re pretty good at it.
Why We Do Not Have a Return Policy
This is the part that makes people nervous, so let’s put it out in the open.
Amazon has trained all of us to buy first and decide later. Send it back, no questions. That works when the product came off a pallet of ten thousand identical units.
Your sash is built for your opening. If it comes back, it goes in the dumpster. Literally. There is nothing else to do with it. So no, we do not have a return policy, and we do not need one.
What we have instead is 25 years of front-end work. Every question in our order form is there because someone once got something wrong, and we made sure nobody would get it wrong that way again.
Do we make mistakes? We are human beings. Of course we do. And when we do, we fix it. Without argument.
Here is the number that should settle your stomach: over 25 years, you are not buying the first one. You are buying the fifteen thousandth one.
What We Actually Need From You
Not much. And none of it is technical.
You do not need to identify your window. This is the biggest hurdle for homeowners and the one we removed entirely. People ask us for a catalog, and the honest answer is that a catalog would be a book full of rectangles. Behind one picture there might be nineteen different SKUs. Double hungs are worse. They carry almost no identifying markings at all.
So do not try. Just show us what you have.
Photos do the work. Upload them into the order form and we take it from there. If uploading photos from your phone is the sticking point, we have a video for that, for both iPhone and Android. If that still feels like a lot, ask a neighbor or a grandkid. That is a two minute favor.
The rest of the questions are the easy kind. What color are they? Are they painted or not? Simple answers to simple questions.
How Long This Actually Takes
Set the expectation correctly and you will be fine.
Filling out the order form takes five to ten minutes. Gathering the information first is what takes the time, which is why we put the checklist up front. Look at the checklist, collect what it asks for, then start.
Compare that to three hours at your kitchen table with a salesperson working you toward $12,000 worth of windows.
Fifteen minutes on a website is not a lot to ask.
The Mistakes That Cost People Money
Replacing the whole window over a broken crank. Price the hardware first. Always.
Replacing hardware you did not need to. When people order replacement sashes, the existing hardware is usually still in good shape. Our own driver rarely carries hardware on his route, because it rarely fails.
Trusting epoxy on rot. Epoxy buys you time. It does not fix wood rot, and it usually makes the eventual sash replacement harder.
Calling before looking. There are fifteen buttons on our site that say start your quote. People scroll past all of them to find the phone number, then ask a question the order form was about to answer.
Just Measure the Rectangle
Square peg, square hole. Tell us how big the peg is. You do not need to know what kind of peg it is or who made it.
Stop thinking about windows. Measure the rectangle and let us do the rest. We have already done the legwork so that when your sash shows up, it fits.
Your home is worth saving. Windows is all we do.
Start your quote at fensterusa.com.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Ryan: Stop thinking about windows. Literally. Your lack of confidence is rooted in a lack of knowledge. You might say to yourself, well, I don’t know anything about windows. And we say that’s okay, because we do. In this episode we’re going to give you the tools to be a confident consumer and put trust in our expertise.
Introduction
Ryan: Ryan the Sash Guy here with Fenster Components. I’m here with my trusty sidekick Jason, greatest delivery driver in the world, here to share some stories from the road and customer interactions. Didn’t you find a bear one time?
Jason: I’ve actually found two roadkill bear. One in North Carolina and one in Wisconsin.
Ryan: Two?
Jason: I hope to revisit the one in Wisconsin.
Ryan: Didn’t you call DNR or something?
Jason: I wanted to see if it was permitted to take a claw, a souvenir or something. They said no, no, no. We’ll issue a permit if you want to take it, but you’ve got to take the whole thing.
Ryan: The whole thing.
Jason: The whole thing. That was not an option. But I remember what mile marker he was at. So hopefully the buzzards have picked him clean by the summer or fall, and maybe you, sir, will get a Wisconsin bear claw.
Ryan: You’re handing them out like Leonardo DiCaprio in the bear movie.
Jason: More like, what was the one with Anthony Hopkins? The Edge.
Ryan: The Edge. That’s a good one. One man can do it, another can do it. What are the stories you could tell?
Jason: You have no idea. Probably better that way.
Ryan: Well, let’s get into it.
Setting Up the Episode
Ryan: So a window repair option might be in view, or you’re at least considering one. Now what? Buying window parts for the average homeowner must be terribly complicated. We say it doesn’t have to be. In this episode we’re going to give you the tools to be a confident consumer, and some insight into trusting our expertise.
What I want to do this time is rehash the window issues we’re used to seeing. Stuff that’s in your truck all the time. Take a casement window, for instance. You can have rotten wood down along the bottom. That’s a common issue people see.
Jason: Or the glass. The glass just fails.
Ryan: So a replacement sash.
Jason: Put a baseball through it.
Ryan: Yeah, that happens too. Common things a lot of homeowners see that a replacement sash will solve. You’re not tearing the whole frame of the window out of the wall. You’re just doing the sash. That is probably Fenster’s signature and primary window product, a repair part instead of a whole new replacement window.
So you can have casement sashes, you can have double hung sashes. Same difference. Double hung windows slide up and down. Casements crank in and out. You’re used to seeing those. Then you get into parts and pieces, and we offer repair products for those as well. A double hung window slides up and down on what the technical term is a jamb liner.
Jason: But people call them tracks. And the springy things. Balancers.
Ryan: All that terminology works. Whatever makes sense to you.
Jason: Equalizers.
Ryan: Jamb liner kits.
Jason: Stay on track.
Ryan: Jamb liner kits. That’s going to replace the broken springs, or whatever’s not letting the window stay up anymore.
Then we can talk about hardware. Hardware is a big selling item for us. I’ve seen a lot of people replace windows because their crank handles were broke. Or worse yet, window companies have convinced people they needed to replace their windows because hardware was bad.
Jason: That’s dirty.
Ryan: Depending on what the part is, that might be a $50 fix. Might be a hundred dollar fix. But it’s not a $10,000 fix. It’s completely different. If that’s the issue you have with your windows, the hardware can easily be replaced. We’re coming at this from the perspective of don’t spend money on something you don’t have to. It’s an old adage. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
A lot of times when people are replacing sashes, the hardware is still in good condition. So I’m telling people all the time, you probably don’t need new hardware unless you know that it’s broke.
Jason: It’s very rare that I take hardware on the road with me, because it doesn’t fail.
Ryan: Back in the day, as an old school window repairman, we used to go in and do a whole house full of replacement sash.
Jason: Not replace a single piece.
Ryan: Not replace any hardware at all. People get all wrapped up in what they don’t need to be worried about. We’ve recapped the common failures we addressed in episodes one and two.
Jason: Beyond rotten wood and glass failing, it seems like it’s pretty rare that hardware fails. Are there any other points that are common for a sash or a casement to fail?
On Lifetime Warranties
Ryan: I can take this down a warranty track. It’s not such a big issue for a lot of folks, because a lot of customers come to us looking for a repair option and didn’t realize a company like ours exists. They’re geeked up over, wait, you guys are so much cheaper than replacement windows. A lot of customers are giddy at the fact that they found a less expensive repair option.
But my stance on warranty. You’ve got a lot of window companies out there that offer a lifetime warranty. Well, whose lifetime? You’re three pages into the fine print before you realize that if the plastic somehow stops being plastic, we’re going to honor that.
Jason: That’s a great question. One of the big companies that we service got bought up by a bigger company in Wisconsin, I think. Those are lifetime warranty windows, weren’t they? How do they address that?
Ryan: They’re no longer in business. They got bought up by another company and they won’t warrant any of it. That’s just it. When I say whose lifetime, I mean your lifetime, their lifetime, their lifetime as a company. Everything has a lifespan and nothing’s going to last forever. If you’re convincing someone it’s going to last forever, you’re a pretty good salesperson, because that’s just not going to happen.
So when they say lifetime, what a lot of them will do is, when they get bought out or go out of business, obviously there’s no entity to warrant it.
Jason: There’s no company to honor that warranty.
Ryan: So that’s a fallacy in itself. But Tommy Boy said something about a warranty, didn’t he?
Jason: Something about the butcher.
Ryan: Then the other part of it. I’ve had this interaction with another big window company that we’re loosely associated with. The warranty ends when they stop making that particular model of window.
Jason: That’s convenient.
Ryan: We get a lot of referral business from those companies that no longer make their older versions, because they’re constantly updating. Well, they get around it as, oh, we don’t make that model of window anymore, so we can’t make it. We can’t provide you with a warranty part because we don’t have those parts anymore. But we will sell you new windows. And they might discount them down.
Jason: I field that question quite a bit.
Ryan: I can imagine.
Jason: Quite a bit. So, pointed back on track, what’s the biggest hurdle in the ordering process for our customers?
The Ordering Process
Ryan: We run a very lean operation. We don’t have a bank of customer service reps at our beck and call to talk somebody through the window. We’ve designed it to be very self-serving, very user friendly, internet based. We want you to help yourself through this process. I know it breaks down sometimes.
One thing I find myself saying a lot is don’t overthink it. I get customers that get all up in their head about windows. Windows are complicated, and I don’t know anything about windows. And that’s fine. We literally do not expect our customers to know anything about windows, at least from a technical standpoint.
A lack of confidence is rooted in a lack of knowledge of what they’re purchasing. It’s a double edged sword for me. On one hand, I really don’t have that expectation of our customer base. I would rather let us figure all that out. Let us be the experts. You just provide the information that we need.
On the other hand, when someone says, well, I don’t know anything about windows, that’s kind of a lame excuse in my book, because we have gone to incredible lengths to educate our customer base. There is so much information on our website. The videos, the tutorials, the specifications. But we get the same questions over and over. You know what I’m talking about. How many times do we have to say they come with weatherstripping before I stop getting that weatherstripping question?
That’s the due diligence we’re putting into our ordering process to make sure our customers are buying the right thing. They’re getting the right thing. They’re providing us the correct information. We’ve put so much effort into that behind the scenes that if they would just trust the process and trust our expertise, it’s so much more pleasant.
Jason: If I were to go on Amazon Prime Days and order an air fryer, I’ve got no idea how an air fryer works or what the technology is. I don’t need to know. I just know there’s an air fryer, I hit the button, and it shows up at my house. Why can’t people do that same thing with windows?
Ryan: The questions that continue to elude us. I share that same thought. Our pool pump went out.
Jason: He’s got a pool.
Ryan: The pool pump went out, so I’m shopping online. You do some cursory research. You look at reviews. But I didn’t need to be a pool pump expert to confidently buy a new pool pump. Here’s the size I need, here’s the features I want.
Jason: Did it come from China?
Ryan: No. I think Pentair’s is American made. Wisconsin, maybe.
Jason: Just stop and give them a thumbs up next time. Pool pumps and cheese.
Ryan: So where’s the translation lost between not all customers, but some customers, needing to know every little technical detail behind purchasing a window sash or a jamb liner? It can be frustrating at times. I’m like, we have a whole page that talks about that.
I understand where a lot of that hesitation can come from. But if you’re the person that uses the excuse, well, I don’t know anything about windows. We can tell you all there is to know about windows. Did they take the time to educate themselves on what they were buying?
Jason: I wonder how easy it is for somebody to transact on Amazon or any other product world versus with us. Their confidence in hitting the buy button.
Ryan: With Amazon and most online retailers, you can send anything back. I think that’s what makes people fearful. Oh my God, if I buy these from Fenster, what happens if I did it wrong?
Jason: Well, that’s how Amazon has ruined return policies for every other small business out there.
Ryan: It’s the custom handmade nature of our product.
Jason: I think we’re circling back to, if you let us be the experts and if you read the directions, there’s this big of a chance you’re going to make a mistake.
Ryan: It happens so rarely. Particularly on the custom end of things. We don’t have a return policy because we don’t need one. And that is such a hard thing for people to trust and believe is true. We make mistakes. We’re human beings. We make mistakes. And without question, without argument, we fix it.
Ryan: I would be devastated if we inadvertently caused some kind of issue or misled a customer. That’s not what we’re about. That’s not the level of integrity of the company that we are. I would be devastated if that ever were to happen. But we still make mistakes, and we get it right. We make it right, or we do whatever it takes.
Now, it is so uncommon and so rare that a customer’s order is wrong from our end. We can only go by what the customer puts in the order form. These were supposed to be white. Well then why’d you put sandstone? Stuff like that happens. And even stuff like that is so rare.
You just can’t have a return policy for something you made just for them. That costs us time. Our suppliers, they get paid whether the order’s wrong or right. So we’re out, and those windows go in the dumpster. Literally. What are we supposed to do with them?
Circling back to one of our earlier points. If we could just communicate to people how much due diligence we’re putting into this process ahead of time, it would take so much of that concern out of, are these going to work, are they going to fit? Yeah, they are. Because we’ve done it 10,000 times. Probably 50,000 times. If you do the math over 25 years, you’re not buying the first one. You’re buying the 15,000th one.
Jason: So we’ve merged into this a little bit, but I’m not sure if you want to get into the minutia of how you’ve tried to simplify the ordering process over time. I’m sure every year you add some new thing to address a problem you couldn’t have imagined in a thousand lifetimes could be confused. And then you’ve got to add it to the ordering process.
Ryan: If you only knew.
Jason: Let’s take your blood pressure medicine first so you don’t get too excited.
Ryan: Happy thoughts. It’s a constant evolution. And this isn’t to bash customers. Not at all. We’re just trying to make it as easy as possible so the outcome you seek as a customer can be achieved.
It’s frustrating. Deflating. That’s the best word I can come up with. When a customer says your ordering process is just too complicated, and I’m like, how? The frustration is, if they knew where we started, where it is today, and how it continues to evolve to make that process as simple as possible.
A lot of times you just have to do it. Step one, step two, step three. A lot of customers that have that initial pushback are refusing to follow the process.
Jason: They want a JCPenney catalog.
Ryan: Right. If you just did the first thing, and then this happens. You get some folks that want to circumvent that process. Maybe it’s a technology issue. Well, I’m used to doing it this way.
Jason: I’ve got a light bulb real quick. Maybe you do this already. Have you created a how to order video, where it’s screenshots and live video, and it’s this easy, press here, press here?
Ryan: Yes, we’ve done that.
Jason: Man, that was fantastic timing.
Ryan: I think that’s like the first thing you see on the home page.
Jason: Despite the fact that I work here and I know a lot, I’ve never been a customer, so I don’t know much about the customer experience.
Ryan: Or they just scroll down to the bottom and dial the phone number. I’ve fielded this question many times. The timing on this episode, our receptionist Ellie had been on vacation last week, so I was playing customer service rep and business owner.
Jason: She’s cleaner than you are.
Ryan: And probably more pleasant than I would tend to be.
Jason: More patient with customers.
Ryan: Definitely more patient. But the number of phone calls that are, yeah, how do I order windows from you? Really, there are like 15 buttons that say start your quote that you scrolled past.
Jason: To get to the phone number.
Ryan: To get to the phone number. And then those questions come up. Well, what about this and what about that. I know, but those questions are addressed in the ordering process that you’re choosing, for whatever reason, not to use. And I’m not saying that’s good or bad.
In today’s world of customer service, I don’t want to have to talk to a person.
Jason: Why do you want to talk to us? Terrible to say.
Ryan: In that same flip side, why would they need to talk to us?
Jason: Do they need the warm fuzzy of, this isn’t a scam. This isn’t a bad decision I’m making. Help me feel good about sending you money.
Ryan: It’s hard for me to separate. My buying confidence online is, I don’t want to pick up the phone and listen to your spiel. And then folks that are apprehensive about putting their credit card in. I don’t want to give my credit card to a human being. Now my credit card number is on some sticky note that fell on the floor for somebody to pick up. That part really gets me.
Jason: So it’s a new purchase. It’s an unfamiliar purchase. And me not having been a Fenster customer, I haven’t gone through that ordering process. I probably should, to be more familiar with it. But it’s different. It’s not point and click Amazon. If I made a mistake, everything is going to be okay because I want it to be okay.
Ryan: I certainly embrace where you’re coming from. But that’s why you’ve gone to extraordinary lengths to make it very easy throughout the process. You don’t need to know all this stuff. Just give us these eight pieces of information and then we can make it all better for you.
Probably the most unconfident customer is the one who immediately grabs the phone and starts asking questions. They haven’t taken the time to educate themselves. They haven’t taken the time to watch those videos, or even just start the process.
Jason: They’re not even trying to help themselves.
Ryan: But where the simplicity comes in is, okay, what color are they? Are they painted? Are they not painted? The questions start really easy.
Jason: The questions are, oh, I got number one right.
Ryan: The questions are incredibly simple if you’re reasonably paying attention to what you’re trying to buy. So we’ve taken that guesswork out of the entire process. Particularly one of the biggest hurdles we’re trying to touch on, which is identifying the correct window.
Identifying What You Have
Ryan: We tried to do catalogs. Some of the old school people want, can you send me a catalog? It’s a book full of rectangles. Because there’s going to be a picture of a window, and then there are going to be 19 different SKUs beneath it that you’re going to have to figure out technically if you want to.
I hate to trivialize it, but that catalog would literally just be a bunch of pictures of rectangles, because the details are so specific and technical. A casement window is a casement window. Double hungs are worse. They’re almost impossible to identify. Double hung windows have very little identifying markings on them at all.
So we take that whole part, that whole guesswork, out of it. Just show us what you have.
I know I’m harping on the phone call people, but my whole thing is I enjoy those conversations, particularly with customers who have bought something. We can’t help you unless we can see what you need help with.
Jason: Help me help you.
Ryan: Help me help you. We have to see what you have. There’s such a visual component to this. Oh, I’ve got XYZ windows. That’s great. We make 18 of those. Which one do you have?
The average customer, the typical homeowner out there, has no idea the scope of the window industry, and the depth over 40 or 50 years of home construction that we have products for. It would blow people’s minds. So we’ve wiped the slate clean of, you don’t have to know any of that. You don’t have to figure any of that out.
The most technically challenging thing is uploading the pictures into the order form. We have some old school folks that are challenged by that. I understand, but they’ve got young people in their lives. They can come over and help. They can ask a neighbor or a friend or a grandkid.
Jason: You know what would be helpful? If we had a video that showed how to load pictures onto the order form.
Ryan: That video is there. For iPhone and Android, both.
Jason: What about flip phones?
Ryan: Well, you got me on flip phones. We might be back to your Ball State days. That’s all you had.
Jason: I miss my StarTAC. I loved it.
Ryan: Good old Motorola.
Jason: I briefly had a BlackBerry, but not for very long. I had one of those Androids where the cover would slide and you had a big keyboard on it. That one was pretty fancy.
Ryan: In our youth.
Closing
Jason: I’m not sure if there’s anything else you want to bring in, but we’ve hit on the customers and the ordering. We recapped the common mistakes, how windows fail, why they break, why they need to be replaced. So I’ll let you take it home from here.
Ryan: One more thing I want to touch on is the questions that are difficult, or the pieces of the puzzle that customers may have difficulty with. We’ve put the information in there. We’ve added the support structure. Oh, I don’t know what they’re talking about. Well, here’s a tutorial for that, or here’s a video we shot.
I would even use this as a plug to follow us on socials, and follow us on YouTube, because there’s so much more information in the videos I shoot in the shop and the guys shoot. All those little tidbits of information. There’s a whole other level of information, confidence building, and security that we can give the potential customer. Oh, I mean, these guys are legit. They know what they’re doing. They know what they’re talking about.
You bring all that together, and I think where that confidence still lacks for the customer is not making those connections.
Jason: We’re really hacking on Amazon in this video.
Ryan: Where they’ve kind of ruined it is everything is so fast. Instant gratification. I type in AMA and Amazon pops up. They have put so much into simplifying their platform, and it’s instantaneous.
Jason: Jeff Bezos didn’t even like books when he started. I heard the story last week. He just said, okay, I’m going to sell books because they’re easy to store. It’s an easy place to start, and then I can start understanding the logistics network I need to build out.
Ryan: So we understand that what we’re trying to do is complicated. It’s not an easy purchase. It can be a confusing purchase, particularly if you have no window knowledge and you’re on the outside looking in. I think we’ve hit all the bases of, just let us do what we know how to do. But we fully admit and embrace that it’s not a quick, easy purchase. And it’s going to take some time.
Maybe it’s something we’re constantly working on. How do we connect the customer to that information and build in the confidence?
Our biggest takeaway from this episode is don’t overthink it. I use this analogy all the time. Square peg in a square hole. Just tell us how big the peg is. You don’t need to know what type of peg it is. You kind of need to know when the peg was made. But everybody gets that analogy. Rectangles. Stop thinking about windows. Just measure the rectangle, and let us do the rest.
We’ve already done the legwork, making sure our customers are ordering the right thing and they’re going to get the right product that solves their repair issue. Let us be the experts. Just show us what you got. Give us the information we’re asking for. Simple answers to simple questions. That’s all we’re asking.
Jason: So somebody’s going to sit down and order a window for the first time. They’ve never done it. They know very little about what they’re doing. How long do I need to order a window and do it properly? Should I set aside 15 minutes? Give me that expectation of how much time I need to dedicate to following your ordering process.
Ryan: Great question. The timeframe would be how long it takes you to gather the information we’re looking for. I think we do a good job of saying, hey, before you start, here’s the checklist. Here’s the information we’re going to be asking for before you jump into the order.
Filling out the order form can take five minutes, ten minutes. It’s collecting the information we’re looking for that can be time consuming. But again, you trade that for all the hassle. Three hours at your kitchen table with the guy who’s strong arming you into $12,000 worth of windows, versus 15 minutes on our website. Not a lot to ask.
Jason: That makes sense. If you set that expectation up front to say, don’t come into this process thinking this is Amazon, click, boom, checkout. Because you’re going to be unsatisfied. You’re going to be frustrated. It’s not going to work out. This is a checklist. Go through the checklist. Make sure you have this information before you start the order, and everybody’s going to be happier.
Ryan: So we hope you’re feeling a little more confident about the purchasing process. On our next episode we’re going to be sharing some success stories from customers, and some road warrior stories from Jason. Just how customers trusted in the process and trusted in our expertise, and they ended up saving time, saving money, and saving frustration by choosing a repair option with Fenster instead of going with full replacement windows.
Until next time. Thanks.
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