You get what you pay for
Posted by Ravenelle Brammer on Fri, Jul 29, 2011 @ 03:31 PM
Quotes, their famous and they are the one liners of the world that should tell someone what they really should already know. A penny saved is a penny earned. Very true you save enough pennies and you will one day earn something. Now we all know that most quotes come from those that have already learned an invaluable lesson and want to pass that lesson on with out shall I say a whole lot of “Hoop La”. In the home improvement industries, where I go into peoples homes and give free in home estimates, I am sure to use some type of quote. I use to always use an analogy when trying to compare a Rusco window to another product such as a, “Hyundai is not a Cadillac.” Well, times they do change. Some business gets better and some go bankrupt. Today, I am more likely to be quoted to say, “A Yugo is not a Lexus” to compare the quality difference in our replacement windows to a $149 or $189 window ad. I still wonder some times if people can see the big picture or do they just let the quote go in one ear and out the other. Even other countries have sayings. There is a Chinese saying, 一分钱一分货, "yi fen qian, yi fen huo" (pronounced ee fen chee-ahn, ee fen hoo-oh). This translates literally into one cent gives you one cent’s worth of merchandise. Makes sense, right? Well I think that gets pretty well close to “You Get What You Pay For”. Of course I think maybe I should switch to what Mark Twain once said, “A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.” What I am trying to say is simple. What ever you’re buying don’t buy into all the simple gimmicks that are out there. Look at the big picture the quality of the company and longevity of the product. A quick gimmick to get you in your home should lead you to an understanding in the end that once you have the price, the product was not the price that it was advertised to be. Let’s face it. If you need ten windows and the add reads $189 dollars per window. Well you can do the math and should know that is $1890 dollars. So once that salesperson gives that presentation and the small performance of dancing on their window and setting it a fire is over, in the end the price is higher than $1890. Should you not be wondering did you get suckered into letting this person in my house? Is this what bait and hook means? Some times if what you want is the cheapest price it is what you get. In the end once those windows are in your home, do you have someone to help you if you have a problem. Are they going to stick with you if you have a complaint and solve that problem? Will the installer when your windows arrive at your home pull a window from the ones going into your home and stand and dance on the window like the salesman who came into your home? In any bid situation where price is the deciding factor either the product or the labor will be cheaper to get the price lower. Any good product with bad labor leads to the same means end as great labor and a bad product. How many times can you remember a government job in the news that turned out with the product or the job itself to be useless or just did not work. How many times in those situations do you remember someone saying well it was low bid. Most every highway road improvement jobs are low bid and we know those always turn out right and never have to be re worked or re done. To end on a light hearted note,OliverWendellHomeswas once quoted to say, “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” If you are having home improvements done on your home I hope your experience will be a good one.
Author-Doug Sowers
dsowers@ruscowindow.com