A different Champion experience

I recently had a rep from Champion to my home for a quote on replacing 13 double-hung and 1 picture window. 7 of the DH and the picture are on the ground floor, with the other 6 DH on the second floor. None are oversized, although I don't have the exact measurements with me right now.

Overall, it wasn't a bad experience for my wife and me. There was no pressure at all to buy same-day -- he never even asked if we wanted to. And while there were certainly some gimmicks (he used a lighter and infrared thermometer instead of a heat lamp/BTU meter), there was also no haggling on price.

He showed us the 'list' price, added a 'standard' 10% discount, then mentioned that all of their newspaper ads offered "Buy 2 get 1 free" and added an additional 33% discount (for a total of 43%), then offered to show us his 'best price' by adding an additional 8% (total 51%) showing us where his spreadsheet said 'Price Below Cost' (another gimmick, but easy enough to see through) and then backing the discount back to 50%. All of this was done in the span of about 2 minutes with no response from us.

This brought our total price for the job to $7620 ($544 per window). Is this a reasonable price for this area? Based on what I have read here over the last couple of days, I may not have their lowest price yet. Other than messy-looking welds, are there complaints with Champion's quality?

I am very interested to get quotes from other companies, but am having a hard time finding a good one (my other choices seem to be Window World and Dixie Homecrafters, who we had a bad experience with). Any other recommendations for the Raleigh, NC area would be much appreciated. Thanks!

The best way to check the quality of a company is with the on-line databases. Google "consumer complaints", there a a bunch of sites where consumers complain about bad companies. Some states keep on-line records of complaints made about contractors. One important thing to keep in mind is the size of the company and the amount of business they do. If the company does a few thousand jobs a year you should expect a few complaints.

Angieslist is becoming a popular way for consumers to check on local companies, the only drawback is the charge you a membership fee.

Not necessarily - it depends where you live. For example, there's no charge for the Providence version of Angie's list, but to join the Boston list, there's a subscription fee. Any place the list is more active - and hence more useful - there will be a charge.

Isn't that silly. He could have figured all that on his calculator keeping his mouth shut the whole time, and then just given you the price of $7620. He could have looked professional and saved himself the embarrassment of looking like a schmuck.

The pitch and discounting is enough to make me want to loose my dinner.