Short answer: a Polish factory can make a perfectly good uPVC or aluminium window. The weak points are measurement, installation and aftercare. If nobody in the UK owns those three in writing, the lower price is not a saving yet.
The short answer
We are a Staffordshire and Cheshire installer. People ask us to look at prices from Polish fabricators because the totals look dramatically lower. Sometimes the specification is genuinely keen. Sometimes the price is for supply to a pallet, in white, with no survey, no scaffold and no one to adjust the lock in a year. Those are different offers that happen to both be called “windows”.
This is not a complaint about Polish manufacturing. Profiles such as Aluplast, Veka, Rehau and others are extruded and fabricated across Europe, including Poland, to a high standard every day. Judge the contract in front of you.
What you might actually be buying
Read the Incoterms in plain clothes. Are the windows delivered to your drive, to a depot, or collected from a warehouse near Calais? Who pays import VAT and any duty, and is VAT shown as UK VAT on a UK invoice? A consumer buying from overseas without a UK contracting party can find the consumer-rights conversation harder when something arrives damaged.
Lead time includes manufacture, haulage and a slot to fit. A cracked unit on a pallet is a remake, not a quick collection from a local glass merchant, unless someone has agreed that. Build that delay into the kitchen programme before you knock out the old frames.
Survey is not a tape measure in a message
Openings are out of square. Cills slope. Bay heads have dropped. A width and a height texted from the largest point will make a window that is tight at the smallest point. Deductions for the frame, the horns of the liner and the sealant gap are a trade, not a guess. If the factory never sees the house, someone local must, and that someone must be allowed to stop the order.
We will survey a house even when the windows are coming from elsewhere, if the responsibility is agreed. We will not quietly inherit a wrong size. If you want us to supply and fit, we would rather specify a system we can remake and warranty than police someone else’s pallet.
Fitting and the first year
Installation is fixings, packers, drainage, sealing and adjustment. It is also the morning the keys do not throw because the frame was racked. A fitting gang that is in the country for three days cannot come back for a dropped sash in November. Ask, in writing, who returns, from where, and at whose cost.
Making good is part of fitting. If the price stops at “windows installed” and your plaster is on the floor, the cheap supply has an expensive local ending. Waste, including old glass, has to go somewhere legal. Scaffold and parking on a Stoke terrace are not included just because the factory was efficient.
Guarantees that mean a phone number
A 10-year frame guarantee from a company you cannot serve papers on is a PDF. Glass seals fail, and hardware wears, on every continent. You want a named UK party for installation, and a clear route for product claims: who collects the unit, who pays carriage, who fits the replacement. Insurance-backed cover, if it exists, should be a scheme you can check, not a sentence under the total.
Also check what voids the guarantee: fitting by others, dark colours outside the approval, or failure to maintain drainage. Supply-only guarantees often assume a competent installer. If that is you, you have accepted that clause.
When the saving is real
The saving is real when the specification matches a UK supply-and-fit quote line for line, and you still have a competent local survey and a comeback path you believe. It is also real for some trade buyers who fit every week and can remake a sash without drama. It is less real for a household doing one house, once, with a builder who “knows a man with a van”.
- Named profile and glass build-up
- Who surveys, and what happens if the size changes
- Delivery point, VAT, damage, and remake time
- Who fits, and who returns for adjustment
- Product guarantee and installation guarantee, with names
- Waste, scaffold, cills and making good
When to book a survey
Book a local survey before you pay a foreign factory, not after the pallet is booked. Bring their quotation. We will tell you if it is the same specification we would write, and we will say plainly if we are not prepared to fit it. Across Newcastle-under-Lyme, Stoke-on-Trent and Cheshire, the useful work is catching the gap while the deposit is still in your account.
Questions we hear on survey
Are Polish windows lower quality?
Not as a rule. Unspecified windows are lower quality, wherever they are made. Ask for the profile and the glass.
Can Windows 4 You fit windows I bought elsewhere?
Only if we agree that in writing, including warranty and what happens if they are the wrong size. Often we would rather supply the job so one company owns it.
Why do UK quotes look so much higher?
They often include survey, delivery, installation, waste, VAT and a company that is still here next year. Put those lines next to the Polish total before you decide you are being overcharged.
What if I have already paid?
Get the sizes checked before manufacture if you still can. If they are already made, the survey becomes a fit-or-not decision, and you need a fitter who will say “not” in time.
