Al, the glass business is like any other, with good operators and bad. Uninformed customers "demand" the lowest prices because they don't know any other way of judging value. They don't buy glass (or a lot of other items) often enough to know how to properly judge a good piece is worth a certain price. They falsely believe that a windshield, is a windshield, is a windshield and therefore the lowest price is all that matters. Then, when there are ripples, and leaks, and easily done scratches, they just gripe about how poor quality is today. What complicates the glass business is that most windshields are paid for by insurance companies, and their prime motivator is lowest cost. After all, they don't have to live with the poor qaulity. I was in the collision repair business and had to always work at getting the customer and the insurance people to do the right thing.

Yes, there are good windshields out there. I had one put in my '72 about 6 years ago. You need to make it clear to whichever glass guy you talk to that you won't be satisfied with crap glass, so he shouldn't even bring it up. Some glass guys just don't get it. They do so much price driven glass they either don't know, or don't care, that good glass is available. You need to take the time to find "the guy" in your area who can understand what you want.