My husband and I had a terrible experience with Majic Window at our cottage.
We walked the representative through the house, showed him what we wanted, and he showed us his product. It took a little over an hour, we liked the product, and we were very interested in purchasing 9 windows from them.
We then sat down at the dining room table to talk about price. The Majic representative wrote down the basic information on the back of his worksheet and said that "his guys" would normally quote our job at $19,751. He then asked what we thought we would spend on the job and we told him we thought we would spend around $15,000. He then said that because he really wanted our business, he was willing to go down to $14,450. He then asked about the other quote we had received, for a very similar product. We told him it was around $12,500. He then said that he was going to give us a one-time only price offer of $12,850 - that this is the price he would give his family, that it was the lowest price we would ever get - BUT, that we had to sign up on the spot.
At this point, we were still very interested in the product, but were not willing to commit to anything. We not only had another contractor coming, but we wanted to talk about it and do some research on the various companies we had narrowed it down to. We told him we needed time to think about it and that we would like to get back to him in a few days. He got upset and said that no, the price was only good if we signed up on the spot. We asked what price we would get if we decided to go with his product in a few days and he shook his head no and said that we could not go with his company unless we decided to do so right then. That we either had to sign up on the spot or forget about it. He then went on to explain that this is the way his company operates - that they are able to give special incentives but only if people sign up on the spot - otherwise, they would waste a lot of time making repeated visits and calls to people who weren't interested. He essentially walked out in a huff and said something along the lines of it being our loss.
I am a reasonable person and I understand pressured sales techniques. I even understand offering a special price for people to sign up on the spot. But I have three problems with how all of this happened:
1. I don't feel like I should have to "bargain" for something as important as a $15,000 investment in our home. For the price to drop from $19,751 to $14,450 to $12,850 within a ten minute time span - all based on the answers we gave him about our expectations and our other quotes - it's insulting and unfair. Would the price have dropped that low if we had given different answers? Would it have dropped even lower? Who knows - the company's pricing scheme is obviously completely at the whim of the sales person, or so it seems.
2. I think it is ridiculous to expect that we would make a $12,850 investment in our home without having time to think about it - to jump on it because of the pressure instead of being able to weigh all of our options and do the research. While I understand offering a special incentive for signing up on the spot, I think it's unethical to only offer an on the spot option. After spending 90 minutes with him, he offered NO option for us to move forward with his company??? That's not right.
3. If that technique is, in fact, the only way they do business, I think they should tell people that ahead of time. If they would have told us that the only way we would be able to purchase their product would be if we were ready to commit on the spot, we never would have wasted our time with an appointment. We knew we had other contractors coming and we also knew that we were going to do research before making our final decision. Majic completely wasted our time by not telling us what the sales technique was ahead of time.
I personally believe that this sales technique is unethical. read more