When deciding to make a major purchase, most people do the legwork and research each aspect before putting down any money.
I only wish my brother was one of those people. My parents needed to have their HVAC system repaired and he told them that he would find a company to do that. He went with the first company listed on a web search because he figured that if they could spend that much on positioning with the search engine, they had to be a reputable company, right? Wrong! The company just had the resources dedicated to top billing advertising. They showed up to repair our parents HVAC system and ended up telling them that they needed a complete replacement of the system that was only six years old. When dad called to say that they were going to be spending over a thousand dollars on the new heater I was really upset. I knew that this would put a strain on their savings so I decided to do some research on the company they were working with. I asked him to give me a day or so to look into it. After researching online and reading reviews it was clear that many of the customers felt as though they had been taken advantage of. Just because a company has a huge online presence and pays for top billing in advertising doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do the research and check them out yourself before committing to work being done by them. I called my brother with the information that I found and he apologized for not taking more time. He just figured that time was money and he didn’t want to waste his on the computer. I hope he learned a valuable lesson from all of this and at least we saved our parents from a big expense.