Dear Tony,
20th January 2015

Dear Tony,

I wanted to write to inform you and your readers of an unfortunate situation we have recently been placed in by the organisation that is supposed to be representing our best interests.

Following a recent renewal of our membership to FENSA we learned of some additional costs that are now involved in the authorisation of domestic installations. As the commercial side of our business has grown significantly in recent years we have taken a conscious decision to do fewer retail installations, so we didn’t feel we could justify any extra costs for the handful of projects we might complete in any one year.

So we got in touch with FENSA explaining that our business is going down the commercial route and asked if we could withdraw from the scheme and get our money back. We did the same thing with the BFRC and they kindly obliged straight away. FENSA however were not quite so understanding and wrote a rather hostile reply stating we had been suspended from their scheme for not submitting enough retail installations, but despite that, we couldn’t have our money back.

I completely appreciate that FENSA needs to come down heavy on installers that are not willing to comply with their regulations or industry standards generally but we feel we are being treated with a very heavy hand for the fact that we are a small company who has simply changed its business model and been honest about this change.

Is it possible that FENSA has forgotten what it’s there for and is no longer acting in the interests of the small installer as well as the larger companies? I hope not, for the industry’s sake.

Yours sincerely
Tony Monteith
Key West Glass