Various Other Pacesetter Corporation Experiences

Any opinions expressed in the following story are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the positions of anyone involved in the creation or maintenance of this web site. Information presented in the message should be considered "as observed by, and to the best knowledge of, the author", and not as a statement of fact.

Thanks to Pacesetter Corp. and their attempted legal action to shut down this site, we have now started asking each author to swear, under penalty of perjury, that everything stated in their story is true. Unfortunately, we have been unable to contact this author. However, someone seems to have posted this story on the misc.consumers.house newsgroup, and thus it can now be read there.

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From:    Private
E-Mail:  Private
Subject: Please read this.

I am currently employed by the Pacesetter Corporation, and I have a few things to say in response to the posts on your website. I have read all of the information from top to bottom, and I feel that there are some things that deserve to be rebutted.

I work in what you would call the "telemarketing" department, and I have recently been one of their top producing "telemarketers".

The Pacesetter Corporation is a 41 year old company with a good reputation in all of its nationwide offices. On occasion, and perhaps on too often an occasion, things do occur that shed a bad light on any large company. If all of those things were completely unavoidable, it would be a much simpler world. The fact is, mistakes do happen, and every effort is taken to amend any problems that do arise in the course of our business process.

The Pacesetter Corporation is a sales organization, and I do not believe that anyone in any office would claim otherwise. Speaking from experience, I can tell you that Pacesetter strives to maintain consistent relations with all of its customers. We regularly make follow-up calls to ensure that work was done properly, and that the customer is fully satisfied with the work that was done. Again, on occasion there is a customer that cannot be pleased regardless of what efforts are taken to quell their concerns. It is the nature of any sales business, you can not please everyone all of the time.

I will tell you that I call hundreds of our previous customers on a weekly basis, and rarely do I have complaints from these individuals. I say rarely, because there are those that have had problems with their work, or were unhappy with the level of service that they were provided. I am instructed by my management to ensure by the end of that call, assuming that individual does not hang up on me, that said customer has all of the necessary information to resolve their issue. If they were such a cold-hearted and faceless entity, why would they even care?

Many people with posts on this site speak of Pacesetter "preying" on the elderly and uneducated. It might interest you to know that there are many sections in the training manuals for every department that deal with these atrocities. For example the first "red light" for telemarketing representatives is that if the individual that you are speaking to sounds to be mentally impaired in any way, you are to immediately and politely end the phone conversation.

As for the mistakes of individuals, these things do happen. It is unfortunate that laziness and bad work ethic do lead to unsatisfied customers, but nonetheless, it is very difficult to weed out those sorts of individuals with interviews. When it is found that an individual employed by the company is not doing their job to its fullest, prompt corrective action is always taken, and depending on the severity of the offense, those individuals are often terminated.

I can confirm for you that, yes, our company does have a ten step sales approach. The ten steps do have to do with control, and for anyone who knows anything about sales, they know that you don't simply go into someone's home, measure windows or siding, calculate a price, and then leave a price on the coffee table and slink silently out the door and wait for them to call and make a purchase. Rapport must be built. Trust must be established. Pacesetter does not sell the least expensive product on the market, frankly, but we do sell a quality product worth the price. We want a customer to know who they are buying from or potentially buying from before we even want to show them a product. Would you pay $400 for a brand new window if you didn't know why it was worth that price?

Realistically, many of the problems stated on your website are well-founded, and should be dealt with in a timely fashion. I am not arguing that problems do not exist. They do, and I can assure anyone reading this, assuming the publisher of this page is willing to post things that are not negative on their website, that Pacesetter does have a vested interest in ensuring that all of the concerns of their customers are met.

There are a great deal of previous customers of Pacesetter who have done business with us five, ten, fifteen times over the course of the years. I talk to them DAILY, and I rarely hear complaints. The absolute majority of our previous customers are completely satisfied with the work that has been done for them and the products they purchased from Pacesetter, and many of them ask me without prompting about new products they would like to have installed on their home.

I call people who have not been previously contacted by Pacesetter regularly as well. I feel compelled to tell you what our instructions are when attempting to create a sales lead. We are instructed to attempt to set an appointment. We are instructed to attempt to find a product that a customer might like at some point to do. We are instructed to be courteous, polite, and friendly. If a customer becomes upset or frustrated, we are to politely end the call. This a company standard, and anyone who is not doing their job according to these instructions should be reported, and are always either warned, formally reprimanded, or terminated for violations of these rules. Unfortunately, every incident of a "bad" telemarketing call can not be tracked, but I can tell you from experience that incidents such as these are not tolerated.

Defamatory though this website may not be, the simple title of this site speaks volumes. Perhaps what is posted is not defamatory, but the title most definitely is. While you post these negative things about our 41 year old company, why not seek out the thousands upon thousands of satisfied customers across the country who are completely satisfied with our treatment of them, and who constantly refer friends, family, and anybody else who will listen to our company?

Coming to a close, I promise. As for Pacesetter putting liens on someone's home as collateral for a loan, this is common business practice. I am not aware of any company that will provide large loans without any collateral whatsoever, particularly for those not blessed with stellar credit.

I love the company I work for, and I respect the integrity with which they run their business. We are not a "Glen Gary, Glen Ross" type of sales organization. Those companies do not last long, and our longevity should tell any reasonable individual that we do not conduct our business that way. Quite frankly, I was personally offended at reading that quote. We do not try to "hook" anyone into coming into our office to pick up a part and then attempt to slam them into a sale. In most cases, the part is waiting for them at the front office, if we know they are coming, and the front office staff is not a sales force. They are to input data, and keep the paper stream flowing.

I would appreciate it greatly if the publishers of this page would post this feedback on their site. I have nothing bad to say about them. All I can say is that they must feel pretty strongly about their dislike of our company to have put the work in that they did to create this site, not to mention the money necessary to maintain the domain name and the webhosting service. I am sincerely sorry that you had such a bad experience.

I will be looking to see if you were "fair" enough to put something from a devoted Pacesetter employee on your site. Thanks in advance for letting me respond.

Admin's Note: This post may have been altered from the original version to remove the sender's name and e-mail. Spelling and grammar have not been corrected.

Pacesetter Corp. may sell a quality product, but it definitely wasn't worth the price, at least not for us. We bought these windows to keep the heat in and our heating bill down during the winter, but the windows don't seem to have made much, if any, difference.

The title of this site is merely our opinion of Pacesetter Corp. based on our experience with the company. This site was created to tell our experience with Pacesetter Corp., and thus it would seem natural for the title of the site to reflect our opinion of the company.

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