Pacesetter Story: Ten Reasons
Ima Myself
go away. Most are good reads.
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Ten Reasons
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Last Thursday (April 17) a sales rep from Pacesetter came out to our
home. My wife and I were thinking of getting siding or perhaps new
windows on the home we bought last summer, and so when the Pacesetter
phone call came a couple weeks ago I was glad to invite a sales rep by
to give us some estimates and tell us about their products. In the
past years in our previous house we had investigated top-quality
windows, and had some installed, so I knew about sales pitches, what
to look for in windows, and typical prices.
Steve, our sales rep., came to our house and the sales process worked
pretty well. A couple strange things about it. First, we were
clearly interested in exploring many options with windows and siding,
and possibly doors. With windows we also wanted to examine a range of
options, and I think we made this pretty clear to Steve. Yet, Steve
only showed us the 7000 series, which I take it is the top-of-the-line
model. He said something to the effect that Pacesetter only wanted to
sell products that would offer a permanent solution, and give
customers satisfaction, so this window was the only product he wanted
to show us as far as windows go.
We have sixteen windows in our home, and knowing the typical costs for
installing high quality windows, I was imagining a reasonable expense
would be around $9,000 to $11,000. Steve showed us a list price
something like twice that, but gave us a volume discount and a cut of
his commission, so that in the end we had a price somewhere over
$14,000. That was, in my opinion, slightly over the range of
reasonable, but the windows did look very good, so we got down to
replacing six windows for about $6,300. That's still about $1,500 to
$2,000 more than I expected, but I guessed these windows would be
significantly better than any other products, and figured the price
might be worth it.
Steve was a great salesperson in the sense of working through the
process. I admired his skill and talent. He told us he had been in
the home improvement business all his life, and his father had been a
contractor as well. Steve said he was pleased to be working for
Pacesetter, partly because they had the best products, and partly
because it was a good company.
But, after he was gone, I had to do some research on Pacesetter to
decide if we could trust everything Steve had told us. I found plenty
of information about Pacesetter on the Web. All of the information
that praised Pacesetter was available from Pacesetter sources, and
seemed mainly interested in hyping their products. All the
independent information was on your site, so it looked highly
critical. This worried me, because part of the sale was Steve getting
us to believe him about Pacesetter being a great company, and your
site undermines that, and undermines trust he had established.
There are several industries where prices are inflated to pay sales
representatives high commissions: certain types of life insurance,
vacuum cleaners, home improvement, large book sets. I figure the
inflated cost is just part of business if you want those products, and
the producers have to offer something significatly better than what
you could get elsewhere to justify the higher costs.
By the way, I checked with the Better Business Bureau in St. Louis,
and the Hazelwood office has had only five complaints in the past
three years, and all have been resolved satisfactorily. That's a
great record, so perhaps the Hazelwood office is much better than
these on the coasts and in the South where you seem to be getting most
of your letters from former employees.
But as I read more about Pacesetter in your Web pages, particular the
testimony of former employees, I decided to wait on Pacesetter. We've
paid $19 to overnight our contract cancellation to the Hazelwood
office in Missouri. I'll be shutting Pacesetter out until I've had
more time to research other products. Here are my reasons for
cancelling the order:
1) Steve gave us the impression that customer service from Pacesetter
was wonderful, but your Web page undermines this.
2) I think Steve gave us the impression that Pacesetter was the only
company that offered high-quality fiberglass windows, but this is
false. Other companies make such windows.
3) I think I made it clear to Steve that I was willing to pay
top-dollar for top-quality product, and I also was willing to pay more
to support living wages and unionized labor, but Steve would not help
us understand how much more we would be paying for Pacesetter
products. There was no honest and detailed comparison to other
comparable products. Instead, he relied on emphasizing Pacesetter's
record and history. There was also no careful explanation of energy
ratings and what they mean, a part of the sales pitch I usually enjoy
when learning about windows.
4) Steve presented the vertical integration of Pacesetter (owning
factories, trucks, and having every person involved with the product
as an employee) as an advantage that would bring us lower costs,
higher quality, and higher craftsmanship in all stages from
fabrication, installation, and customer service. Yet from this Web
Site I think his presentation was false.
5) I expressed to Steve my belief that the Pacesetter windows might be
the best product, but I reckoned they were perhaps about 20% more
expensive than the second-best product, and I thought maybe they were
only 5% better, so the value was not adequate to justify the higher
cost. His first response to this was, "you get what you pay for." On
reflection, I'm not sure I want to pay for the very best product when
a nearly equally good product might be available for a much lower
price. His second response was to ask if the (imagined by me) 20%
greater expense of Pacesetter was the only barrier to a sale. I said
that was pretty much so, and he offered to split the difference,
lowing the price an additional 10%, but then as we continued
negotiating this offer was forgotten and never came back.
6) I can find no independent sources that extoll the virtues of
Pacesetter products. Where are the neutral third-party evaluations
that confirm what Steve told us?
7) On reflection, I'm offended that Steve followed the Pacesetter
rules and stayed with us for about 3.5 hours or more, extending his
time by ignoring points we brought up and not directly answering some
of our questions. Our children needed attention and care during this
long evening (he was in our home from 6 to 9:30), and I think he could
have made us much happier if he had been out by 8:00, or even earlier.
8) I'm particularily concerned about Pacesetter's practice of seeking
out customers that can not really afford their products. I am a
social worker, and I'm well aware of the evil done by companies that
make expensive repairs to cheap homes owned by persons with low
incomes. Ask any urban social worker, and they'll tell you of elderly
home-owners who are making payments with high interest rates to
companies for expensive repairs that were not justified, and if the
payments are missed, these customers may lose their homes. I had no
idea Pacesetter was one of these companies, and if they are, I'll want
nothing more to do with them.
9) I tried to get Steve to tell me more about his work as a
salesperson with Pacesetter. I asked about quotas and comissions, to
see how he would respond. He was evasive. I think he was too honest
to say a flat-out lie, so maybe that's why he didn't answer with a
clear statement claiming it was great working for Pacesetter. He
evaded my question about pressures on him to make sales, except to
answer with the standard, "this is how I feed my family," answer that
Pacesetter evidently tells him to make to such inquiries.
10) After reading posts from former employees on this Web Site, I'm
concerned about our sales rep's health. My wife and I both thought we
smelled alcohol coming off Steve, although I hoped it was just a
perfume he might be using to try to disguise the cigarette smell on
his clothing. Yet there were aspects of his delivery that suggested to
me that he was not well. I've read your posts from former employees
about being brought to tears by Pacesetter management, or of turning
to alcohol to cope with the pressure. This repels me from
participating in any system that destroys employees, if indeed
Pacesetter is destroying Steve.
Editor's note: This post has only been altered from the original
version to remove the sender's name and e-mail. Spelling and grammar
have not been corrected.