The top tier pontoon companies (Premier, Manitou, Godfrey, Bennington, Avalon/Tahoe, Harris, JC, Crest, Cypress Cay, etc) all seem to be similar in warranty, quality, build time, etc. For us the decision came down to what dealer gave us the best deal with the same options and arguably most importantly, who we were most comfortable with. They all call things different things, have different packages, etc so my wife and I made a spreadsheet and had them all build out a boat with as similar of options as possible (ie full third toon instead of express toon, center toon storage, enclosure, flooring, layout, etc).
Then, we compared apples to appless to narrow it down to a couple of pontoons and finally met with each dealer to see what they offer as far as service after sale, what the yearly services cost at their dealership, if they pickup and deliver, what "goodies" come with the boat when they deliver, etc. It's a lot of research but I feel it led us to the best solution for us.
All that being said, I think the Avalon pontoons are well built and their factory stands behind their boats 100%. This was the second choice for us when we got down to our final decision but we went with a different brand. A friend had seats go bad (was a vinyl issue for many manufacturers) and it was close to the end of the warranty so they just sent an entire new front seat set to put on. The best part for him was that the dealer and factory let him keep his boat once the pulled the seats off until the new ones came in.
