By: George Efthymiou

For most homeowners, windows are not something they would normally have on their mind unless their existing windows present some type of problem that interferes with the comfort and safety of their family. Some of the reasons that may initiate a conversation about replacing existing windows are the following:

Existing windows:

How do I go about selecting a company to replace my windows?

Most homeowners will continue to live with very old, inefficient, nonfunctioning and ugly windows for a very long time before they consider replacing them. Once the decision to replace the windows is made, for a lot of homeowners it is the start of a long and unpleasant adventure. The average homeowner does not know much about windows other than the fact that they are located on the walls of their home, and they are part framing material and part glass. Many people that are interested in replacing their windows may start their search online. Unfortunately, the internet is not the friendliest place to find accurate information you need that relates to your unique window circumstances. At the very top of your search results, you will encounter up to half a dozen ‘sponsored’ results. These are listings that companies will pay the search engine to place their listings up at the top in order to grab your attention and encourage you to visit their website and prompt you to fill out forms to make an appointment with their representative to get you to buy windows from them. Some of those listings are simply companies that encourage you to fill out the contact forms so that they can collect your information and sell it to several companies that buy lists of people that are interested in getting new windows. These lead aggregating companies even go as far as high jacking the name of the window company you are searching for to mislead you to their site where they prompt you to fill out a form that captures your information that they later sell to companies that buy leads. If your intention was to find out information about windows in general, to help you make an informed decision, when evaluating your options for replacing your windows, you suddenly hit a wall. It will not take too long, searching on the internet, before you will come to the realization that you are finding more irrelevant or misleading information than the useful information you were hoping for. It is very hard or next to impossible to become a window expert by roaming online to educate yourself on the subject. The amount of misleading information you will come across will overwhelm even a window expert. If you set your mind to learn everything about the subject, be prepared to spend hundreds of hours sifting through the information you find online to identify not only what is true but more importantly whether that information relates to your unique window problem. Even then you will never be able to acquire the necessary expertise, without talking to many window experts, who from their point of view will only be willing to tell you what they think you should know just to get you to use them as the company to supply and install your new windows.

Traditionally, most homeowners that need new windows assemble a list of local window companies that service that area and call as many as half a dozen or more of these companies to come to their home to give them an estimate. These estimates are advertised as a ‘free estimate’ and most homeowners perceive them to be free or at no charge. They are of course not at all ‘free’, to either the window companies going to give the estimate or the homeowner who is content to get as many ‘free estimates’ as possible. The real cost to the window company is very easy to understand once you examine the process carefully. If we assume that the average homeowner looking to replace their windows will call five companies to give them a ‘free estimate’, it is easy to understand that on average a company must give five estimates by the time they close one window deal. Of course, we are talking about averages here and some companies will average better than others, some will close a deal on average for every three estimates and other companies will close one for every six or seven estimates. For a homeowner to get a ‘free estimate’ a salesperson, or window company representative will need to set an appointment, get in his or her car and drive on average half an hour to get to the homeowner’s house for the estimate. It is not uncommon for these estimates to last for an average of an hour and a half, or even much longer in many cases. When the estimate ends there is of course the return trip for the salesperson back to their office. At the conclusion of each estimate one of two things will happen. Either the salesperson and the homeowner will come to an agreement and sign a deal for replacing the windows, or the homeowner will resist the pressure for signing a deal and continue getting more estimates. If a deal is signed, the salesperson has made a sale, and the homeowner ends the search for selecting a window company to replace their windows. If a deal is not signed the homeowner continues his search and lines up more ‘free estimates’ and the salesperson moves on to the next free estimate he is called to give. For a lot of the salespeople, the time spend with the customer for which he did not make a sale does not end there. He or she will of course continue to follow up with the prospect to hopefully persuade them to give him or her the job. They will follow up with emails and calls and sometimes even visits back to the house. The average salesperson will easily spend at least an hour and a half following up with each prospect he had made a presentation to and provided an estimate. When we add up the time spend with each prospect to travel to and from the house, give the presentation and estimate, drive back and all the follow ups, the average ‘free estimate’ costs the salesperson at least four hours of their time plus expenses for transportation to and from the estimate. For the salesperson who averages one deal for every five estimates it is easy to calculate that he or she will spend 20 hours of their time plus other expenses to get one deal done. That is half weeks’ worth of time for the average person. It is a no brainer to see that for the salesperson there is no such thing as a free estimate. They know what it costs them.

At this point most of you are thinking that the ‘free estimate’ is free for the homeowner. Who cares about the salesperson? Well, let’s examine the costs to the homeowner that is getting a ‘free estimate’. The overwhelming majority of companies that will give you an appointment for a ‘free estimate’ at your house are not doing it out of the goodness of their heart to educate you about windows or to provide you with the best advise as to what is the best choice for you. They are doing it because they want the opportunity to get you to be their captive audience while they make a pitch to you about their windows. They will put together a presentation to show you that they have the best product, and you should sign with them right then and there and buy new windows from them. They will bring a small sample window and possibly a cross section from a corner of the window along with other props. Most window companies will only set an appointment for one of their representatives to come to your home for a ‘free estimate’ only if you agree that the appointment could be up to an hour and a half long and most times it runs even longer. In addition, they will not make an appointment for you unless all decision makers will be there for the presentation. From the company’s point of view this is not a free consultation. It is simply a pitch for the company and the windows they represent, and they will do their best not to leave your home without a signed deal. And why shouldn’t they take that approach? They are not in the business of giving free advice or educating homeowners about the best choices available to them for replacing their windows. Any window installation company that goes to a homeowner’s home to measure the windows and just give the homeowner a number for what it will cost to replace the windows, without spending a lot of time pitching their product, is shooting themselves in the foot and are doing themselves a disservice. If the only thing that was important was the number, then they could have given that information over the phone and save themselves all that time and trouble. So, what is the cost to the homeowner that is getting a ‘free estimate’. The obvious one of course is the time they must spend sitting through the presentations and the time afterwards when the salesperson is trying to convince them to give him or her the job. The other cost, that is less obvious, is the anxiety and pressure they will feel when they do not really want to decide right then and there, but the salesperson keeps insisting and doing his or her magic to influence their decision. A lot of people cannot resist the pressure or discomfort they feel and will yield and sign an agreement to get their windows replaced by that company without even getting an opportunity to explore any other options. The fact that every agreement signed in the home comes with a three-day recission clause, the ability of the homeowner to cancel the agreement within three days of signing, tells you that most salespeople will apply pressure to get the job. This pressure is not always adversarial, in fact the good salespeople apply it in a way that makes you sign because you feel guilty or uncomfortable. The recission clause in the agreement has been mandated by consumer protection agencies to protect homeowners from these situations where they are pressured in their homes to sign these agreements.

It is not necessarily a disaster if you sign right after a presentation, provided you signed for the best choice of window quality and price available to you from all available choices, and assuming you got a chance to explore all of them and make your comparisons. The problem is that, if you sign before you have explored all your options, chances are that you have not made the best choice, and you have probably paid too much for what you are getting. For the homeowners that will resist signing right after a ‘free estimate’ presentation they will continue with the next appointment they lined up until they have gone through all of them from their list. If they manage to go through all five estimates, they will on average have invested between ten to fifteen hours of their time getting all those estimates. All this time spend getting the estimates is not a big problem for the average homeowner. Every homeowner must invest time to make an educated decision about which company to select to replace his or her windows. So, the problem is not the time they invested in sitting through all those presentations. The real problem is that every company that came to give them one of those presentations was there to push their company’s agenda and get the order. They were not there to dig through all the options available to the homeowner and help them make the most sensible decision. They would only present what was in the company’s interest, not the homeowner’s interest. The only things that the homeowners learn through this process is what the window companies that came to the house wanted them to learn. The salespeople are not consultants. In most cases, they do not know much about windows other than what their companies drill into them about the product they represent and how to present it to the homeowner during the ‘free estimate’. The lack of knowledge by salespeople is even more glaring when it comes to how the windows need to be installed, if they are to be installed properly to avoid long term problems. There is an alarming trend, over many years, where window installation companies sell what they call ‘replacement windows’. This term means one thing to the professional window installation companies, and it has an entirely different meaning for the average homeowner. For the window installation companies, the term ‘replacement window’ means that a window is installed without a flange on the exterior. It is simply inserted into an opening on the wall and screwed into the wall from the sides. The perimeter around the window, the space between the window and the wall, is typically sealed with some type of silicone sealant and sometimes some aluminum is bent and installed around the window to make it look cosmetically proper. The average homeowner does not know that the term ‘replacement window’ describes a method of window installation. In the typical homeowner’s mind what he understands from ‘replacement window’ is that he already has old windows that will be replaced. On Long Island, ninety percent of homes and existing windows are not candidates for ‘replacement windows’ or, more properly described, windows without an exterior flange. This is one of the worst mistakes homeowners make when choosing the company that will install their windows. They get windows that are installed the wrong way, and the result is long term damage of their home’s structure because of the resulting water leaks around the perimeters of their new windows. Window companies never explain what the proper installation process is to the people they sell windows to. They simply assure them that they will do the job in a way that causes minimal disruption during installation, for example telling them that they do not want to disturb the siding around the windows, even though they know that over time water leaks are guaranteed to happen when they install windows without exterior flanges. They present the same argument when it comes to telling the homeowner that they do not want to disturb any of the existing interior trim, or moldings around the windows inside the house. If the proper way to install the windows is using windows that have flanges on the exterior, and the existing interior trim can be saved it is ok to do so. If, however, the window is installed without a flange just so that the trim is not disturbed then you are looking for big trouble.

By now most of you realize that the cost of the ‘free estimate’ to the average homeowner is not the cost in time invested or the aggravation throughout the whole process but the very real danger and the risk of making the wrong decision and paying way more than what they receive and, in the process, put the integrity of their home in danger. The concept of making a list of window companies that can replace your windows and calling them in to your home to give you an estimate to choose one of them was the only option sixty to seventy years ago when this process was conceived for all kinds of home improvements. The average homeowner had very little knowledge about the products he needed for his home and there was even less information to be acquired. In today’s world there is a lot of information available about almost anything. The problem is how to recognize what is real unbiased information and facts and what is what the provider of that information wants you to believe is true. The other main difference today from the past is the availability of places or showrooms where you as a homeowner can visit to see actual windows displayed in a way that they would look in your home and ‘test drive’ the product. In addition, you can choose to engage the people that staff the showroom if you want to, and ask questions relating to their specific products or questions relating to your specific situation as it applies to the replacement of your windows. You do not have to endure through a home presentation that could last hours. You can choose to walk out any time you feel that you are not getting something for choosing to be there. If you make a determination that you like what you see in the windows displayed and if you believe that the people are knowledgeable and they are willing to share their knowledge with you then you can be in the driver’s seat and direct the process by which you get the knowledge that you seek in order to make an educated decision for yourself without anyone pushing you in any direction.

As a homeowner looking to replace the windows in your home you can start your search online. You can educate yourself of as many available options as you can and search for reputable companies that have served other homeowners with the same needs as you. These homeowners already took the plunge and used one of these companies to replace their windows and they have described their experiences in some forums online. I know that a lot of reviews online are suspect, and many companies engage the services of companies that create made up reviews. However, if you dig deep most of the times you can sort through the actual reviews and the bogus ones. If you come across companies that have been around for a very long time and their online reputation is good, it will be an indication that they are doing the right thing to last so many years. You can also ask friends or relatives or coworkers for authentic recommendations if they used these companies’ services themselves or if they personally know someone that has. The process of choosing a company to replace your windows is not easy, but engaging with reputable companies that have actual showrooms you can visit may be the easiest and least painful way to go through this process.

Let us now revisit the concept of the ‘free estimate’ and whether that means that the homeowner does not actually pay for all the estimates they get. We have already established that there is a real tangible cost for all the free estimates that companies give to homeowners and that also these companies absorb these costs by paying their salespeople that go out to give the estimates. The only thing to ask yourself is where does the money that these companies pay their salespeople come from. The answer is obvious even though it may be hard to admit. The person that ultimately pays for the estimates is the person that buys windows for their home. It is ultimately built into the price that the companies charge for their services when you give them the job. If a company must give five estimates before they book a job, then you know that if you buy windows you pay for all five estimates you received. Of course we are again talking about averages here. The cost for all the estimates given to all the customers, that either end up buying windows or not, is paid by the homeowners that end up getting their windows replaced.

We have talked so far about the process of choosing a company to replace your windows, but we have not discussed all the window options out there or, even more important, the proper way with which your new windows should be installed. There is not a single proper installation method for every home or every window. That depends on the when the home was build, what window is there now that will be removed, what is the exterior finish around the existing window and what is the setup on the interior of the existing window. There are many different possible situations and each home and sometimes even different windows within the same home need to be evaluated before deciding what good installation options are available. The most damaging mistakes are made by homeowners who do not consider the proper installation method and only focus on which window to choose for their new windows.

Stay tuned for future articles that explain both what makes a quality window as well as what the different installation scenarios are, for existing window types that are to be removed to make room for the new windows.