[MassHistPres] The vinyl industry

[slater at alum.rpi.edu]

I thought some might find this amusing (or alarming...)

http://www.vinylindesign.com/docs/400/380.pdf

The vinyl industry is attempting to show people how much cheaper and
better their products are. They show little graphs which show the
relative costs of, among other things, a vinyl window versus a wood
window.

They show a vinyl window being $818.55 and a wooden window being
$1,474.65. Although it's bad enough that exaggerated costs are being
used (I think by adding "maintenance" to the wood window cost), take a
look at how the graphs are scaled.

In the window example, the little bar for "vinyl" is about 1/30th the
height of the bar for "wood", even though the vinyl price is more than
half the price of the wood. They have distorted their scale to make
people think that vinyl is a tiny fraction of the cost of traditional
materials such as wood and metal. 

They even have a section which bills vinyl as a "green" material. 

The very thought of living in the "vinyl house" on the brochure is
making me throw up a little in my mouth.

Ralph Slate
Springfield, MA 
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