SHORT REVIEW:
Avoid this company -- if you are an educated consumer who does her/his due diligence before making a decision, its not worth your time to schedule and have a visit with Midwest to get an estimate. I lost an hour and a half of my life I cannot get back.
As our visit for the estimate winded down, the sales rep we had gave us a complete run around to tell us that "we'll work out a good price in the future" and he unequivocally refused to provide us with any sort of actual estimate until we agreed we'd be doing business together. So baffling! (And false advertising might I add -- "free estimates"...guess not in my case!)
I've worked with a lot of contractors/companies to get bids on home remodeling projects over the years -- from total kitchen rehab to painters to hardwood floor installs to HVAC systems and more -- and I've never encountered something like this in my life.
THE DETAILS OF OUR INTERACTION:
We scheduled an appointment with a company representative named Cory (who later told us he was also the company's VP) to come out and give a "free estimate" -- as advertised. I'd like to stress that Cory was a very nice, decent man -- but his sales strategy is what was baffling.
We spent the first hour of the appointment going over our needs and wants/ discussing options and preferences. Scope of work included 3 exterior entry doors, 2 windows, 1 sliding glass patio door. Cory seemed pretty knowledgeable and that he wasn't trying to oversell us, even suggesting some alternatives instead of total replacements since things were working properly - we were just looking to modernize/freshen the look. Then he asked if we could sit at the kitchen table to write up and go over an estimate. Still going good. Up until this point I had a good feeling about the options and thought this company seemed pretty good.
However, once we sat down and Cory started filling out a form for our estimate, that's when the nonsensical run around began. It ultimately ended with the conclusion he would absolutely not provide us a quote tonight.
***First he asked to confirm our project timeline. We said sometime in the next two months, we were ready now. He told us it could take 6-8 weeks before they could schedule (with the time needed for ordering and their crew also having a busy summer). Ok, that's fine we said, we can do it whenever as soon as reasonably possible. Then he said if we didn't do the work for awhile, he couldn't give a quote today because the price he would give us today wouldn't necessarily be the price when his team would be ready to schedule the work. We told him we didn't understand and there was some circular talk about how busy he was and he needed to prioritize his time (between sales calls and "on top of working 60 hours in the office" every week). Umm? OK? We didn't follow that...
***Then we noticed he was looking at our kitchen wall calendar with appointments the following day with 2 of their competitors. That launched him into a sales pitch first of why they are better than those companies (ok, fine, expected that to happen). But then he said it would be better if we called him after we met with the other companies in order to get his quote. We just spent the last hour going over our wishlist...why couldn't we get a quote now? We pressed him why it was so odd for someone to do their research before making a decision, and whether he wanted us to see the other quotes first so he could beat their price? He said no, no that wasn't it. Then he said that it was very unusual for someone to get more than one quote -- even rattled off some statistic about how 80% of his customers get only his quote and don't need to evaluate other options because they are superior. He continued on that he wouldn't provide us a quote until we knew we wanted to work with his company. We said we were disappointed that we scheduled this visit in order to get a free estimate (AS ADVERTISED ON THEIR WEBSITE AND MARKETING MATERIALS THAT THEY PROVIDE) but now wouldn't even get an estimate from him?
***Then he said it seemed like we were undecided about what options we wanted. We pressed for clarification, what did we need to decide on before he could give a quote? He then went on about how we possible wanted an 8 panel or a 6 panel door for the entry (which earlier he told us would be the exact same price) - so we made a decision and told him let's go with the 8 panel. He hesitated again and then launched back into the 80% of his customers don't need more than one quote.
At that point, we basically asked him to leave.
Again, nothing against Cory personally - he seemed like a very pleasant, nice guy. He just had a very weird/passive aggressive sales approach and refused to give us a quote -- the whole reason he came to our house.
Sorry I do research and won't get pressured into making a quick decision? There went an hour and a half of our lives we can't get back. read more