My brother Guy, our sales manager at Colortones, just returned from a builder social connected to our local home builder's association. At the social, he spoke with a local builder we have done some recent business with. The initial job we bid for about six months ago, we lost to another area supplier. It was a tough loss because we did the takeoff, the research on the products and the education and our competitor used all our information and beat our installed price by 40%.
We weren't thrilled the builder handed all our work and pricing to a competitor, but understand that a 40% savings could not be ignored. The builder assured us that our competitor was providing the same prefinished product with contractual obligation to install material to manufacturer specifications.
A month later, Guy visited the job for a quote on interior trimwork for the subcontractor on the job. This happened to be smack in the middle of the siding installation. The first thing Guy noticed was that the siding was not prefinished. The second glaring problem was that the wrong type of nails were being used. There were also multiple cosmetic issues. Now we knew our competitor could not match our quality at 40% less, but even we were shocked by what we saw. This was a Yugo sold as a Ferrari.
We knew the builder we worked with on this job, wasn't an on-the-site builder, choosing instead to leave the building in the hands of subcontractors. But the decision to tell the builder what we had seen wasn't an easy one to make. It can back fire as an attempt to bad mouth a competitor, which alot of builders despise. We decided the work was so bad and so deceptive, it was worth the risk. Guy sent an email with a brief list of concerns and links to manufacturer website to see the installation errors for himself. We left it at that and moved on.
Back to the social. The builder informed Guy that he followed up on his email and made the competitor tear all the siding off as material was falling off the house and nails were rusting through the paint. The builder also didn't pay for the prefinishing, since they didn't do it, opting instead to have a painter paint it after it was installed. To date, our competitor has not received one dime for any of the work they have done, and probably won't at all according to the builder.
What's the lesson? Take your pick. Quality and honesty always win out. We might have lost a $50,000 job, but our competitor lost $50,000 by deceiving his customer.
