My friend Tony lives in a 70-year-old house with single-glazed, double-hung wood windows supplemented with aluminum storm windows of unknown vintage. The window sash on the top floor don’t work so well, and the house is drafty, so he thinks he needs replacement windows.

 

He’s thought so for the last three or four years. But this fiftysomething, Harvard-trained healthcare analyst is a self-described “wimp” about paying people he doesn’t know for home-improvements that he doesn’t know much about.

 

When his wife’s best friend had the windows in her house replaced three years ago, Tony was moved to his first attempt at window shopping.  In addition to relief from peer pressure, he realized that he might qualify for an energy tax credit of up to $1,500 if he bought replacement windows by the end of the year.

 

Tony mulled things over until late November before calling the dealer-installer who had done the friend’s replacement windows. The contractor, whom he describes as a “low-end, no-name brand supplier of vinyl windows,” gave him a ballpark estimate without going to his house — $300 to $400 per window.

 

Tony thought, “Okay, but I’m not going to let someone start tearing out the windows of our house in the middle of the winter. I’m not even sure that the new windows are the kind that’ll earn the tax credit.”

 

The following spring, Tony decided to dig a little deeper. He went first to a couple of big box stores to see what they had to offer. He found vinyl replacement windows at about $450 apiece, plus installation labor. Then he visited a dealer in up-market Bethesda, Md., and was introduced to fiberglass replacement windows at twice the price per unit. He also visited the showroom of a big-name window manufacturer where he was forced to listen to a two-hour pitch on why the company’s $1,000-per, clad-wood windows are better than any other.

 

“The salesman tried to justify the price with using terms I didn’t understand, technical arguments and wild projections of costs and energy savings. I’ve got to tell you — it was more complicated than the healthcare debate. In any case, I couldn’t afford the super windows.”

 

Tony decided to go back to square one—he made an appointment with the “low-end, no-name” vinyl window installer to come to his house to measure and develop a final price. But when Tony learned that his wife couldn’t be at home for the meeting, he called the contractor to re-schedule.  “The guy went ballistic,” according to Tony. “He was p-o’d that I hadn’t acted immediately after our discussions the year before, and started accusing me of trying to waste his time again. I thought, ‘You know what? The heck with this guy.’”