My wife called these guys when they stopped by going door to door and set up an appointment. She forgot to tell me and so I was called the next day on my cell phone asking about the appointment.
Confused, I said "well, I don't know why she thinks we need a new roof, but if you want to do an estimate, be my guest."
Them: "Okay, we'll need you and your wife present"
Me: "What? I've gotten estimates on all kinds of home improvement work, and I've never needed to be home to do it. Why must I be home for you to determine how many shingles I need and what they cost?"
Them: "Well, we've had times where the spouses turned out not to agree on something and we get in the middle of a big mess"
Me: "I don't give a damn about the shingles, they're fine. If you don't want to quote them without me present, don't worry about it, I highly doubt I need new ones anyway. I'm sure if I do, there's no shortage of people who will give me an estimate without ANYONE having to be present if I so choose. They ARE on the outside of my house, after all. Good bye."
Well, like most things, I thought that would be it.
A month later, they call me again asking if there's anything they can do to make a sale. I've sold things before, and I respect the effort to follow up.
So I said: "I don't need shingles, but my gutters are damn near falling off. Do you do those?"
Them: "Absolutely!"
Me: "Excellent. Well, if you insist, I'll leave work on time though you'll have to understand I work very long hours and very strange hours. I get out at 7:00pm from work (I go in at 9:30) so realistically the earliest I'll get home is 8pm. If you can't do that, forget it. I'm not leaving early for a gutter estimate."
Them: "No problem, thanks for giving us that second chance. We'll take 20% off your order because we really want your business."
(Now to me, that says they're willing to really damage their margins at 20%, unless they were artificially high to begin with, and they've got even a bit more in there since going straight to 20% without negotiating means they have more to give away if I'm going to negotiate with them, sorry, just the department head who does a lot of purchasing and is heavily involved in determining costs for my department's product in me coming out, what do I know, right?)
So today rolls around, they're at my house at 7:30 anxious I haven't arrived. They were about to leave as I pulled up around 8:10pm.
"Hi I'm Mike from 1st choice home improvement we'll just get the measurements of your gutters. You can go inside and we'll knock when we're ready"
I ask them about the flashing that my home inspector pointed out was potentially problematic, and asked them if they'd quote that and new vents in my attic too. They went on to talk about how home inspectors don't know what they're talking about, they aren't builders, they aren't electricians, and don't know anything, blah blah.
Didn't win any favor with someone like me who is a family friend of the inspector they hired, who, by the way, has an A+ rating with the BBB (unlike their C+ rating, though I don't put too much stock in the BBB, honestly), posesses a builders license, and has taught home inspection on the college level and was a past president of the great lakes region of ASHI. Obviously other home inspectors thought he was alright!
I notice right away they are driving a Ford Taurus (so no ladders? But that's okay, it's an estimate, right?) So they do whatever it is they do outside, and come knocking.
They take a seat on my couch, show me a cross section of the new gutter type (without much context at all), and then belt out the number $1814 after scribbling on some paper. They offered me 1 year same as cash, and a number of other finance options, most of which ended up having a 1 year term, all of which had interest, with all sorts of oddball options. No way am I going to pay interest on a $1814 1 year term, so I thank them for the estimate, and ask them to leave a copy of the estimate and their number and we'll get back to them after we've gotten a few more estimates on it, as this was the first and I had no basis of comparison. Then they said my 20% discount was only good if I signed tonight. I told them I'd have to take the full $2268 price into account when I compared quotes then, because I don't sign anything major without comparing prices.
So they jotted $2268 on a business card and left. So much for that "your quote is good for 1 year and binding on us" stuff the phone sales guy was telling me earlier. I mean, I'd certainly not consider a quote written on the back of a business card binding, after all.
Either way, I decided I was going to call the sales guy and give him an earful about this and demand they extend the 20% or I won't even consider their quote, but after reading the previous review, I'm not going to waste my time.
I'm probably going to get my gutters replaced this year though, now that they brought up all the upsides. Thanks for that, at least! read more