Unbelievable!!

Today, I had an experience that should never happen. I have an elderly neighbor, in her 80's. She asked me about the price quoted to her by an out of town contractor that was going to put windows in her house. When I heard the figure and looked at the windows, I thought that something was wrong. Then I found out that this guy took a check of a thousand bucks as a deposit. The price of the windows (2 of them by the way) was nearly 10% of the price she paid for the house. I told her to get other estimates and to put a hold on that first contractor and see what comes out. She canceled the check and started asking around a little more. She had another estimate of 1/4 the price for the physical windows.
This afternoon, that original contractor showed up and was quite rude to her about her changed mind. She used me a reason for her cancellation, so he then insulted me...I wasn't around at that time. With this in mind, I did a little checking and it's not the first issue that's come from this place. Some guys are really tough spoken when dealing with an 80+ year old with a cane. I'm in the process now of finding her a better person and seeing what these things actually cost. Even with escalating labor costs, my estimate on the price of the windows leaves the labor costs at a rate not seen in any other contracting work I've ever seen. Even if the two windows took two laborers 30 hours to put in at typical local rates, she'd be well behind. With common local rates, two people would be working for over 50 hours for this bill to be reasonable...then if it took them that long, they're not reasonable either...Some people are interesting. It's too bad that there are people like this around. Of course this isn't my specialty, but common sense is good for something. If I were to put 10% of the purchase price of my home into two windows, I'd be significantly perturbed! If, somehow, I'm entirely off base, I'll call the guy and apologize. I doubt that will need to be done, but hey, if I am wrong, I'll own up to it...even though I was insulted (my neighbor couldn't repeat the insult, it was "too bad"...nice older lady:))
My step now is researching reputable window makers/installers to see what's really what. We have a few places that make them pretty locally and stand behind what they do. Helping this neighbor is not unusual, she's a nice lady and a good neighbor to have. We'll see where this goes. I hope it all works out for her and will do what I can to help.