We’ve all seen it before “3 blinds for £99″ and sometimes even greater discounts, just this morning I received a leaflet with that offer along side an extra 10% discount if I quote a certain person when I order.
Initially this offer sounds great, three blinds for the small price of £99, if you were dealing with other companies, even online businesses you wouldn’t be surprised to see the cost of just one blind at over £99.
So how can they do this, how can these companies offer these tremedously low prices plus a free measure and install service for less than £100? It’s all down to the quality, size and choices, or the lack of.
In my opinion the standard leaflet you receive is quite misleading, the one I have in my hand says nothing about maximum sizes or set colours, but I know from experiencing this deal hundreds of times that usually the colour choices are limited to white or cream and the maximum size is around 150cm x 150cm.
Vertical blinds are the standard for cheap blinds, although some companies go as far as offering cheap vertical blinds and cheap venetian blinds. The restrictions are even tighter on those types though.
What if you do want other colours, or maybe your window is bigger than those set sizes? Well guess what, that’s an additional cost, no longer are you getting 3 blinds for £99.
Cheap blinds are usually extremely low quality too, you should expect a mass produced product which is then cut down to size by your retailer, the fabrics used are also of low quality. I can guarantee you will not be given an option of louvre width, 87mm or 3.5″ is the standard for cheap blinds.
In terms of fabric propertise you should count yourself lucky if the fabric simply blocks the light out, don’t go expecting to get a blackout or light reflective fabric without incurring the premium charges.
In my mind these offers are very similar to the sneaky bait and switch tactics used by scam artists, they offer extremely good prices up front, then when they come out for the initial visit the prices really start to mount up with all these ‘additional costs’ and ‘extras’.
I am in no way saying you shouldn’t try to find the cheapest blinds possible, especially in this economic climate, however I am insisting that you make your requirements extremely clear to the supplier and also request samples of the product so you can get a true look at what you are buying.
Tags: cheap window blinds