Double dealing in the double glazing trade

July 1984

Wexford Wexford firm, National Aluminium, decided to carry out a drop-card promotion around the town last weekend, they clearly brought out the worst in a rival company from outside the county.

No sooner had households throughout the town been issued with leaflets singing the praises of National Aluminium products than a strange man began to appear, asking for them to be returned.

The rival company representative knocked on doors asking people if they had received National Aluminium hand-outs. These he took back and replaced with hand-outs from the rival firm, saying words to the effect that their products were better.

One puzzled recipient contacted this newspaper on Monday to relate the strange story. He hardly knew what had happened, he said, until he found himself reading the second leaflet.

His young daughter answered a knock to the door and said there was a man looking for a National Aluminium leaflet.

‘I thought it was someone who wanted a loan of it to read, until the young one came back with a different one altogether,’ he said.

Michael Murray, who has charge of National Aluminium’s marketing promotions, was amazed when he heard the story of the ‘phantom rep’, as he called him.

The company which had obviously had its promotional feathers ruffled by National Aluminium’s more timely advertising was an English-owned firm, Michael explained.

Although originally Irish, the company had been taken over by an English concern when it began to go downhill, he added.

He was confident, therefore, that conscientious customers in Wexford and indeed throughout Ireland would stand behind the Irish-owned National Aluminium and disregard the ‘ low’ tactics of the ‘phantom rep’.

‘It just goes to show how low some companies will stoop,’ he said.