What A Double Glazing Guarantee In Exeter Actually Covers

Nearly every double glazing quote in Exeter arrives with the word “guarantee” printed somewhere near the price, and almost none of them mean the same thing by it. One says ten years. One says lifetime. One says insurance-backed, which sounds like the strongest of the three and is the one most people ignore. Of the quotes homeowners bring us to compare, a good number have all three phrases on the same page with no explanation of how they interact, and the differences only surface years later when something needs fixing. Windows are a purchase people make once every twenty to twenty-five years, so almost nobody has learned this the hard way twice. Here is what each of those promises is actually worth.

Three Different Promises, One Piece Of Paper

A window installation carries up to three separate layers of cover, and a quote that lumps them together as “fully guaranteed” is hiding the joins.

The first is the product guarantee, which comes from the manufacturer of the frames and the sealed units. It covers manufacturing defects - a unit that mists internally, a frame that warps, a finish that fails prematurely.

The second is the workmanship guarantee, which comes from the installer. It covers the fitting: how the frame was packed and fixed, whether the seal against the brickwork holds, whether the sill was set correctly.

The third is the insurance-backed guarantee, which is not a guarantee from anyone doing the work at all. It is a policy from an insurer that pays out if the installer stops trading.

Those three can run to ten years, five years and ten years respectively, and a salesperson describing the whole job as “guaranteed for a decade” is not technically lying while telling you very little. When we quote for double glazing we separate them out. Ask any installer to do the same and watch how quickly the answer comes back.

The Workmanship Guarantee Is The One That Gets Tested

Frames from a reputable extruder rarely fail. Fitting is where problems start, and it is the layer most quotes are vaguest about.

The complaints that come in years later are nearly always installation faults rather than product faults: water tracking in behind a sill because the frame was not packed level, draughts at the head of an opening where the expanding foam was skimped, a sash that drops because the frame was fixed under stress. None of those are the manufacturer’s problem, and none of them are covered by a product guarantee no matter how long it runs.

Exeter’s older housing makes this worse than average. The Victorian and Edwardian terraces around Pennsylvania, Newtown and St Leonard’s rarely have square openings. Lintels have settled, reveals are out of plumb, and a fitter working quickly can square the frame to itself while leaving a wedge-shaped gap to the masonry that only shows up after the first winter of wind-driven rain off the estuary. A ten-year workmanship guarantee from an installer who surveys properly is worth considerably more than a lifetime product guarantee from one who does not.

What An Insurance-Backed Guarantee Does And Doesn’t Do

An insurance-backed guarantee, usually shortened to IBG, exists for one scenario: the installer ceases trading and can no longer honour the guarantee it gave you. The policy then covers defects the installer would have been obliged to put right.

This is not a theoretical risk in the glazing trade. Large national installers have collapsed within living memory, taking their guarantees with them, and small local firms wind up too. Installers registered with a competent person scheme are expected to offer an IBG, and FENSA notes that certificates issued after 6 June 2014 confirm the installer’s warranty is insured.

Two traps. First, the policy has to be registered after the job completes. Being told an IBG is included is not the same as holding the certificate, and if nobody registered it, there is nothing to claim against. Chase the document within a month of the work finishing, alongside the compliance paperwork covered in our guide to FENSA certificates in Exeter.

Second, an IBG does not rescue you from a trading company that simply refuses to come back. While the installer still exists, the insurer is not liable - your route is against the business, not the policy. The IBG is for insolvency, not for stubbornness.

Reading The Exclusions Before You Sign

The exclusions page tells you more about a guarantee than the headline number does, and it is the page nobody reads.

Handles, hinges, friction stays and locking mechanisms are usually carved out onto a shorter term than the frames, so ten years on the window and two on the parts you touch every day is a common split. Glass breakage is almost always excluded once the installation has been signed off, which makes it a household insurance matter rather than a warranty one. Condensation gets split in two: misting between the panes is a failed seal and should be covered, while condensation on the room-facing surface is a ventilation problem and is not, however irritating that distinction feels at seven in the morning.

Then there are the conditions attached to your own behaviour. Some guarantees are void if the windows are never serviced. Some charge a call-out for adjustment after the first year. Both are legitimate, and both are worth knowing before you ring rather than after. The clause to read hardest is any broad wording about seasonal movement or natural weathering, because the vaguer it is, the more complaints it can be made to swallow.

One more word deserves suspicion. “Lifetime” rarely means yours. It usually means the working life of the product as the manufacturer defines it, and in a few contracts it means the life of the company issuing it, which can be surprisingly short.

Your Legal Rights Sit Outside The Guarantee Entirely

This is the part most people miss, and it is the strongest card in the hand. A guarantee is something the installer offers you on top of the law. It cannot take away what the law already gives you.

Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, goods supplied to you must be of satisfactory quality, and durability is explicitly part of what that means. Services must be carried out with reasonable care and skill. Windows that fail after four years were not durable, whatever the guarantee document says about exclusions, and in England and Wales you generally have six years from the breach to bring a claim.

So a guarantee that expires at five years does not leave you with nothing in year six. It leaves you with a slower, more formal route: a written complaint, then the trade body or alternative dispute resolution scheme the installer belongs to, then the small claims track. The Glass and Glazing Federation sets out the consumer protections that apply to glazing work, including the code of practice its members sign up to.

Which is why the company matters more than the number. A ten-year guarantee from a firm three months old is a weaker promise than five years from one that has been trading in Exeter for two decades.

Deposits: The Fund That Closed And What Replaced It

Deposits are where money is genuinely at risk, and the protection is weaker than it was.

The Glass and Glazing Federation used to run a Deposit Indemnity Fund that covered deposits paid to participating members. It stopped covering new deposits from 1 April 2020 and was not replaced by an equivalent industry-wide scheme. Plenty of sales literature still gestures vaguely at deposit protection, so ask specifically what scheme is being referred to and who underwrites it.

What works reliably is Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act. Pay any part of a purchase between £100 and £30,000 with a credit card and the card provider becomes jointly liable with the retailer. Put the deposit on a credit card, settle the balance however suits you, and the whole contract falls within Section 75 protection. It costs nothing if you clear the card immediately.

A deposit of roughly 20 to 25 per cent is normal for made-to-measure windows, because frames are manufactured to your openings and cannot be resold. Full payment before the survey is not normal, and staged payments tied to delivery and completion are better than a single large sum up front.

Passing The Guarantee On When You Sell

Exeter moves a lot of housing stock - a big rental sector, a steady turnover of family homes in Heavitree, Whipton and Exwick, and a constant flow of buyers relocating into the city. Windows fitted five years ago will often be sold before the guarantee runs out.

Whether the cover follows the house depends on wording nobody reads at the time. Guarantees written to the property transfer automatically. Guarantees written to the named customer end on completion. Insurance-backed policies generally transfer, though some providers want to be told about the change of ownership in writing, and a lapsed notification is a poor reason to lose eight years of cover.

If you are selling, gather three documents: the installer’s guarantee, the insurance-backed certificate, and the FENSA or equivalent building regulations certificate. Together they answer nearly every window question a buyer’s conveyancer will raise. If you are buying, ask for all three and read the transfer clause rather than assuming.

Anyone still comparing quotes should read this next to our guide on how to choose a window installer in Exeter, because the guarantee and the company standing behind it are the same question asked twice. If you would rather have the whole thing set out plainly before you commit to anything, get a free quote from us in Exeter and we will put every layer of cover in writing.

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