Entry 07 · Windows & Glazing
A window quote by email: checks before you click
Check a window or door quote that arrives by email before you click links or attachments, verify the firm, and keep the paper trail clean.
A quote for new windows or doors usually arrives as an email with a PDF attached and a link to pay a deposit, and the safe order is to read it as paperwork first and as a message second. Check that the firm name, the sender address and the figures match what you were told on the doorstep, open the attachment only when you expected it, and treat any button that asks for a login or a card detail as a page to reach by typing the address yourself.
If a message already felt wrong after you clicked, the question shifts from caution to sequence. Security, Applied keeps a short playbook for exactly that moment, and its notes on first steps after a suspicious click walk through an account that looks taken, a phishing link already opened and a phone that held your house papers. Keep that reading beside the quote thread, because the thread holds your home address, your deposit and your name together.
01 What should you check before you click?
Start with the sender, not the attachment. The part after the @ sign should match the firm that visited, letter for letter, and the display name means nothing on its own. A firm that wrote to you last month from one address and now writes from a lookalike is a flag, not a new office. Compare the quote reference, the survey date and the figures against the sheet you were left with, and if anything differs, phone the office on the number from that sheet rather than the number in the email.
Attachments deserve the same pause. A quote is normally a PDF you were told to expect, and an attachment you did not expect, in a format that asks to be run or enabled, is reason enough to call first. The same holds for links. A real deposit page still works if you reach it from the firm website you already know, so the button in the message is a convenience you can safely skip.
02 How do you read the sender and the signature?
Read the thread backwards before you reply. If earlier messages came from one address and the newest comes from another, ask why. If the signature block changed its phone number, its address or its company registration line, ask why that too. A firm with nothing to hide answers both questions in one call, and a firm that cannot is a firm you now know more about.
The signature also tells you what to file. A registered company name, a company number and a trading address are all checkable facts, and the note on checking a glazing firm online shows how those checks run. Save the whole message, headers included if you know how, because the sending trail is part of the record if anything is later disputed.
03 What do attachments and payment requests really ask?
A payment link asks for two things at once: money and trust that the page is the firm's own. The first part is easy to check against the quote, and the second is where care pays. If an email announces a new bank account or a new payment page, treat it as unconfirmed until the office confirms it by phone. Fraud that reaches a house deposit usually works exactly this way, by a changed detail inside a real-looking thread.
The National Cyber Security Centre publishes guidance on dealing with suspicious messages that covers the same ground for the general case: unexpected urgency, unexpected attachments and unexpected changes to details are the three signs it names. None of this slows a genuine order. It only slows the version of the order that was never yours.
04 What do you do if you already clicked?
Order matters more than speed. If you entered a password, change it there first and then on any other account that reused it. If you entered card details, call the bank before you do anything else, because the bank's clock runs in minutes where everything else runs in days. If you opened an attachment, close the session, run the security check your device offers and watch the account for the next few days rather than assuming all is well.
Then tell the firm. A genuine installer wants to know its name is being used, and your call protects the next customer as much as it protects you. Forward the message to the reporting route your mail provider offers, keep a copy in the folder with the real quote, and carry on with the order only once the office has confirmed which details are really theirs.
05 Keeping the paper trail clean
Once the real quote is confirmed, the paperwork becomes ordinary again. File the PDF, the payment confirmation and the survey sheet together, and keep them apart from the thread itself so a dispute never depends on an inbox. When the order firms up into a contract, the ledger keeps a separate note on reading a door or window contract clause by clause before you sign.
Open the next quote email with the checklist beside it: sender, reference, expected attachment, typed address for any payment page. One slow minute on those four lines protects the whole order.
Once the quote itself has been checked, the wider sequence matters just as much, because a price agreed in isolation can shift once access, making good and other trades are arranged around it. Before committing, it is worth comparing quotations first alongside the order in which the work will actually run, so the deposit reflects a realistic programme rather than a single line on an email. The Sash and Frame Ledger sets out that sequence in its entry, Order of works when windows are replaced, covering trades, access, dust and the documents to keep before the next stage begins.
Once a quote has been checked, it is worth asking who else is paying for the work. A street-wide scheme can move through survey, funding agreement, procurement and installation, with councils, housing associations and private investors each carrying different stages. The Sash and Frame Ledger sets out the stages of neighbourhood improvement, including who decides, how the money reaches individual households and what a resident is asked to sign before any window is measured.