What another gorgeous day it is here its really sunny and warm and im looking forward to the weekend even though the sunny weather is going to ease off.
I have got an email from a customer this morning that really made me smile its for our testimonial section but the comments in it it just had to go as a full post on our website.

Hi Mark,

Yes – all fitted and working well. It looks really good and we are really pleased with it, although a little disappointed with the weather at the moment…….

In terms of feedback I thought your customer service was excellent – follow up phone calls where needed for additional confirmations, prompt and easy delivery, really friendly and helpful staff whenever I spoke to anyone to do with your company. The fireplace itself is exactly what we were looking for and as I said above looks very good in situ.

All in all I can’t fault the product or the service and I would definitely recommend you to other people.

Scott

Now he may not being enjoying the sunny weather due to the fact he wants to use his new fireplace but im sure the majority of the UK will not agree with him.
Fireplaces and Stoves are not items that are really used in Summer but he may get chance next week as the weather is expected to return to seasonal March weather and with colder evenings he may just get chance to use his new fireplace

Good morning and only a few hours to do at work today in our fireplace world, im at the showroom as usual this morning till 12 where we have customers coming to view and collect fireplaces and stoves.
North Derbyshire Chimney Services have been in this morning to collect two Firefox 8CB stoves which they are fitting this weekend.
Andy has been a long time customer of ours and has purchased from us over the years many stoves, he is Hetas registered so also does some fitting work for us too so it woks both ways.
So after we are finished here today we are meeting our fireplace suppliers at Nottingham as me and my son Jaiden go to the Forest match as we are guests again so will be out of the office for the rest of the day.
Another customer has just collected a Jubilee and Brompton Limestone Fireplace package they have come from bradford and as her Dad owns a courier frim wanted to collect to save the delivery charge.
So another short day as we take more time off what a great job i have here at Castfireplaces i can honestly say i would be loathed to change it for any other job we really enjoy what we do.

Hello and a late post from Castfireplaces today im not still working since this morning we have bunked off for a few hours to go to my sisters for tea as its our brother in laws birthday.
So we really had an early finish today at 5pm so its been a short day in our fireplace world, to be honest very little seems to have been done today time seems to have gone so fast and jobs i should have completed this morning our still in my pile to do work.
We still are very busy here at Castfireplaces selling fireplaces and stoves which is strange because it normally starts getting less busy now the warmer weather starts to arrive.
I did manage to deliver some fireplaces to a nice couple in Chaddesden who came to visit our showroom last week after visiting a fireplace shop in Derby and were suprised how rude they were there and also the price they wanted to charge.
Now manners cost nothing and to be rude to anybody customers or not is just not on whether they are spending £10 or £2000 like this couple did well Derby Fireplace Shop your loss is our gain thankyou.
So this fireplace was delivered by myself as Steve was delivering in Lincoln so i dropped it off for them and had a look round the house they are renovating, i like visiting our customers homes seeing where our fireplaces and stoves are going to be installed.
The only downside was they are Derby fans so i had a little more stick about Forest losing to them last week but is all good fun.
Right off out with the dogs and early to bed im shattered

Here at Castfireplaces we take all our feedback from our customers very seriously and post these comments on our website for all our potential customers to see.
We do take on board all comments positive and negative and thankfully the negative comments are very few and far between, however today we have the following comments to add

Hi Mark

The fireplaces are absolutely stunning and we’re very pleased with them so far, thank you. The combined package represents good value and I wouldn’t blame anyone who thought they were the original fireplaces in our Victorian terrace. Clearly some real skill has been involved in the hand-made tiles and the craftsmanship on the surround. I would not hesitate to recommend the product to any friends wanting to bring back an original-looking fireplace to their Victorian property.

We did experience an issue with delivery where items arrived damaged and the packaging did not seem sufficient. Unfortunately this ended up messing around our installer – we were first told that a replacement could not be shipped in time and we rearranged the installation, causing delay to the project. In the end, the replacement part arrived on time but we’d already rearranged installation by then. We appreciated this arriving quickly, but perhaps if we updated on the fact it was shipped with an ETA we could have avoided re-arranging.

However, this is water under the bridge as far as I’m concerned. I thank you for sending the replacement parts quickly and I’m very pleased with the end result – I’ve yet to try both fires out but I look forward to doing this over the coming days and enjoying the products as we move back in,

So a happy customer in the end the items that were damaged were the Fibre backs that we use for our gas fire backs and one was split on delivery which was replaced by next day TNT the problem was that i had put the bars inside the backs which had broken the top one
Really we should have checked the second fibre back for damage but it was not noticed until the customer checked everything the day of installation.
Of course it was too late then to get a replacement sent out that day and another was sourced from our suppliers and delivered two days later by our on vans service to ensure it arrived intact.
The customer had postponed the second installtion to a later date but the part arrived faster than he and us anticipated, so all ends well and as you can see the customer is very please with his two new fireplaces and we have used this feedback to improve our service

So as you can see even Castfireplaces make small mistakes sometimes but as always if anything goes wrong it does get sorted out at our expense another great reason to shop with us for your chosen fireplace or stove

What a lovely day it has been today and im quite glad to say i have been out in the van delivering fireplaces and stoves instead of being sat in my office.
So im now back in the office after a 5am alarm clock i had forgotten what it was like to get up so early but 15 minutes later i was driving off our drive with my lunch delivery notes sat nav and a lovely cup of tea.
First drop this morning was to Formby in Liverpool followed by further deliveries in Timperley, Winsford, Higher Ferry and finally Betws Garmon in North Wales all delivered without a hitch and perfectly on time right throughtout the day in fact i was 30 minutes early all day.
All our customers when ordering from Castfireplaces get our 1 hour delivery slot which is normally very accurate and our delivery staff will bring the fireplace into your house for you wherever practical.
So i was back at 3.15pm which is ten hours sat behind the wheel im now sorting out a few bits of paperwork before im at the personal trainers gym as i bid to lose some weight which im sure will be harder than anything else i have done today.

Good afternoon im sat in my office planning all the fireplace and stove delivery runs for this weekend when Rhian brings in the post and the first one i open puts a damper on my whole day.
It is from Amber Valley Borough Council and is our business rates bill for 2012/2013 now this really gets my goat, our showroom and factory is at Langley Mill and is where we keep all of our stock and have a showroom for customers to come and visit and view what we have on offer.
Yes we do keep in stock a lot of fireplaces and stoves for customers to take away if they like them in our showroom so it is essential to our business we have premises to work from.
Who the hell would buy a fireplace from someone who has no shop or does not keep any stock i know a few in the trade who operate like this and would steer well clear of them.
Now AVBC sends all business premises owners a bill each year for us to pay them money just for our buildings to stand there, we get no bins as we are expected to pay extra for the waste we produce to dispose of.
Now if i was to have a fire or get broken into there surely i have already paid rates at home to at least have someone attend to sort out our problem so why do you charge us so much for no service its just not right
Anyway moan over im going to ring the parasites and see exactly what we get for all this money GGGGGRRRRRR i could swear

A strange thing Friday morning somebody rang us here at Castfireplaces asking as to whether we sell gas pokers that are used for lighting solid fuel fireplaces.
Now there is a thing i can remember my granny having one that attached to a gas tap at the side of the fireplace and was basically a metal rod with holes in it that was on a flexible pipe and it was put into the fireplace and coal and sticks placed round it and gas poker lit until the fire was well underway and then simply removed.
I have not seen these for years but a quick google search and they still are available for sale not something i would have thought anbody would use, surely it must be simpler using news paper and kindling to light a fire in your fireplace or stove i have never failed to get a fire going yet in my stoves.
So a very odd question but i have pointed them to someone who can supply them what they are after and after a trip down memory lane back to my nanas house its weird what you remember and i can honestly say we have never been asked before for a gas poker in all the years and 1000s of fireplaces and stoves we have sold.

Today we have had a customer visit us from Tamworth to our workshop and showroom in Langley Mill now there is nothing unusual in that until when he rang me this morning asking if we were still based at the farm in Heage.
Now that was a blast from the past as we have been left Heage for a good few years now, infact we started our business there from a lockup unit that was around 400 sq ft.
There was of course no showroom and basically it was rammed full of stock even in the early days we always had things in stock so customers could come and collect fireplaces and stoves from us.
He was very suprised at how much we had grown and how many fireplaces and stoves we had in stock, he was very impressed with the showroom and he did mention one thing that has never changed and that was our competitive pricing.
So Nine years later since we started online trading some things will never change we will always be competitive on price, we always offer the best service and we still have the same outlook for our business making sure our customers have the best of both worlds with cheap prices and excellent service.
We take it for granted as to how we have grown but it reminds you when other people mention it and im proud of our the way we have grown our family business and its very nice when previous customer mention it, blowing our own trumpet agian we must be doing something right.

So we are into March and what a strange thing the British Weather is Thursday and Friday last week was lovely and warm and we were working away with tshirts on loading our vans full of fireplaces and stoves for this weekends delivery run.
Its now Saturday morning and our stove was lit last night as it dropped quite cold and out walking the dog last night it seemed everyone had the same idea, there was loads of chimneys with smoke billowing out into the night air.
So this weekend is forecast to be Zero Centigrade at night which is basically frosty so dont forget to get your stove or solid fuel fireplace ready to light you are going to need it.
So im at the workshop this morning and our firefox 12 is roaring away and im sat infront of it writing todays article in between meeting customers and i must say its lovely and warm in our showroom i could stay here all day.
So have alovely weekend relaxing and if you do get chance have an hour or two in front of al ovely roaring real fire take my advice there really is no better to way to heat your home.

So listening to the news today i heard a story about the profits of British Gas and the fact there profits at the British Gas Residential division are forecast to come in at £551m, which would be a 26pc decline on 2010 and the lowest level in three years, due to lower consumption in the mild winter.
Now whilst i agree it has been a very mild winter for us all it certianly has not affected sales in solid fuel fireplaces and stoves as they have again risen over the last 12 months.
This has got to have some affect on gas consumption as most of customers say when buying a solid fuel fireplace or stove that they are keen to cut the gas bill and reduce gas consumption.
People are sick and tired of being ripped off by these huge energy companies charging what they like and with price increases that customers can not really afford with thousands of people in fuel poverty im convinced it will have something to do with it.
When you think of the amount of fireplaces and stoves bought all over the UK from which ever shop you buy them from thats a huge amount of customers continually switching fuel sources.
Not only is it a far better heat than a radiator you have control over the price you pay for your fuel or if you have a source of wood even free fuel so take a look at the range of stoves and fireplaces we offer and save your hard earned money too.