How matching works

What this site is

Shropshire Panel Quotes is an enquiry service. We do not fit panelling. We do not employ joiners. We collect the details of your job in a form designed to capture what a fitter actually needs to know, and we pass those details to independent joinery businesses covering your area.

That distinction is why you will not find "our team", "our workmanship guarantee" or a gallery of "our work" anywhere on this site. Those would be someone else's team, guarantee and work, and blurring the two is how people end up with nobody accountable when something goes wrong.

The steps, in order

1. You submit the form. It is validated on our server, not just in your browser, and checked for the usual automated rubbish.
2. You get a reference immediately. An email lands with a copy of everything you sent and a reference beginning SPQ. That happens within seconds, automatically.
3. The enquiry and photos are stored securely. Photos go to private storage — there is no public URL for them and they cannot be guessed at.
4. A person reads it. At this stage every enquiry is checked by hand. We look at the style, the postcode, and whether there is a business that genuinely does that kind of work.
5. It goes to a fitter, or it does not. Where there is a match, the details go to up to 3 independent joinery businesses. Where there is not, we tell you rather than sitting on it.
6. They contact you directly. They quote their own prices on their own terms. We are not in that conversation and we do not set their prices.
7. We follow up with you. To ask whether anyone actually got in touch, and whether you got a quote. This is the part that keeps the fitter list honest.
8. You appoint someone, or nobody. Entirely your call. There is no cost to you either way.

Matching is not just postcode and style

Panelling covers a wider spread of skills than people expect, and sending the wrong enquiry to the wrong business wastes everybody's afternoon. A fitter who does beautiful shaker panelling in modern houses may have no interest in splicing a repair into original Georgian joinery. A media wall needs someone comfortable building a stud structure and coordinating an electrician. Heritage work needs someone who knows what listed building consent means.

So the matching takes account of the style, whether the property is listed, whether electrical work is involved, and whether painting is part of the job. That is why the form asks.

Three, and not more than three

An enquiry goes to a maximum of 3 businesses. This is a deliberate limit, not a marketing line. Services that sell one enquiry to eight fitters produce exactly what you would expect: eight phone calls, a homeowner who stops answering, and fitters who stop bothering because the job was never going to be theirs.

What we do not do

• We do not sell your details to anyone outside this matching process.
• We do not add you to a marketing list because you asked for a quote. Marketing is a separate, unticked, entirely optional box.
• We do not publish your address or your photos without asking you first.
• We do not send your name, phone number, email or full postcode into analytics platforms.
• We do not show fake urgency, invented review counts or a "3 fitters available now" message.
• We do not charge you. Ever, for anything, at any stage.

How this is paid for

Joinery businesses pay to receive matched enquiries. That is the entire commercial model and you should know it before you fill anything in. What it means in practice: our incentive is to send fitters enquiries that turn into real work, because a fitter who gets time-wasters stops paying. That happens to align with sending you someone who actually wants your job.

Where it could pull the wrong way is volume — a service like this can be tempted to pass on every enquiry regardless of quality. The follow-up in step 7 exists to make that visible, and fitters who repeatedly ignore accepted enquiries get removed.

How fitters get on the list

Before any enquiry is sent to a business we check that it exists, that it holds current public liability insurance, and that it genuinely works in the postcode districts and styles it claims. We also record whether it does heritage work, media walls and painting, because those determine what it should be sent.

That is a baseline, not a guarantee of quality, and you should still do your own checks before appointing anyone. Joinery businesses can apply to receive enquiries.

If something goes wrong

Your contract for the work is with the fitter, not with us, so a dispute about workmanship or price is between you and them. But we want to know about it — a business that does poor work or ignores enquiries should not keep receiving them. Our complaints route explains how to tell us, and what we can and cannot do about it.

Your data

What we collect, why, who receives it, how long we keep it and how to get it deleted is all in the Privacy Notice. It is written to be read rather than to be unreadable.