Today I was talking with a direct mail guy about advertising for our company. He told me how he was skeptical about gutter guards in general because he bought one at the home store for a few hundred bucks and installed it on his house himself. A few years later it was clogged. This is a common problem and the truth is that most people will try the cheaper option before they call the professionals. If the cheaper option doesn't work, however, it could deter you from ever trying anything else. The truth is you get what you pay for. So many of my customers have spent money on gutter protection two or three times before they finally realize the value of spending more on a good product.
The experience that my advertising rep had is the perfect example of the other side of this issue. He bought a product that didn't work, and even though there was a logical reason the product didn't work, it made him feel that there is nothing out there that could work. I've seen just about everything out there in the gutter protection industry and the reality is that most products don't work as well as advertised, however there are a few that do. If you've been the victim of an inferior product you don't have to give up hope, you just need to do some research or call a professional company with a track record in the industry who has done their own research. I used to sell a leaf guard which is part of a nationally known brand. What we found was that the products performance was directly related to who it was that was installing it. The office I worked for had it's hands full with cleaning up after the dealer that was here prior to them. Poor installation quality haunted them the entire time I worked there and I'm sure to this day. If the manager doesn't put a lot of effort into proper installation then reverse curve systems like that one simply won't work. I left the company once they turned from being a quality and service oriented company to being a greedy sales organization. There are many other products that suffer the same fate, this guard, that guard or topper or cap or screen. In my 11 years all of these products have changed names and ownership multiple times. It's not that they can't work...the trouble is that the managers don't take the time to get it right. This is why product reviews can be deceiving, they don't tell you who will be doing the installation. The right product in the wrong hands is a recipe for disaster. The products that I have found to be the best and which have also reviewed well by various home improvement and consumer testing organizations are the micro mesh gutter guards. The beauty is that there is no magic to them. They are logical (you don't need the salesman to spend two hours convincing you that they'll work) you can plainly see that they will do their job. Another benefit is that you don't have to replace your gutters if they are in decent shape. This alone saves many people thousands of dollars. I would not recommend any sort of vinyl gutter guard even if it is micro mesh, the reason is that vinyl doesn't hold up as well to the temperature changes that we have in the midwest. The best product for the mid-west is Leaf Solution.
I will sum up by saying that my advertising rep asked me if I really believe in the new product that I sell after so many years of selling one of the big name brands...I honestly had to say that I do. I think that enough time has passed since the invention of the reverse curve type systems that their flaws have become evident and companies like Leaf Solution have really come up with something that takes the industry a step further. I'm not sorry I sold the other stuff...like I said, the management really did care about doing the job right while I worked there, but that does not exist any more in that company and really, I've never seen it anywhere else. The advertising guy agreed. He said that he works with contractors all the time and he rarely runs into one that has real integrity. He said that he was glad we got into this business and told us that if we run things with the high standards that we spoke of that we would do well. A product is only as good as the guys who install it.
www.springrockgutters.com
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