The little wil is a compromise antenna. It's not the best, but it works, and sometimes works good. I have had two of them. Mount it in the middle of the roof and tune for best swr. My first one had a 1.6:1 swr on channels 1 and 40 and was flat in the middle of the band. I made a lot of contacts with that antenna using a stock radio and it was great for road trips. If you expect it to perform like a 1000, you'll be disappointed, but if you understand that it has it's applications and performs well in those applications, you'll like it.
As a side note though, I tried using one on a truck with a ladder rack and although it tuned great (1.4:1 swr on the ends of the band and flat in the middle) that was not a good application for that antenna. When an antenna is shortened, the majority of the radiated field exits the antenna at the coil. The whole antenna radiates, yes, but the majority leaves the coil. I know of 4 different configurations: base loaded, center loaded, top loaded, and continuously loaded.
In my circumstance, the coil was down in a metal hole of sorts, with the ladder rack all around it, which would block out part of the signal. I would be talking and hearing great for about a mile, then nothing. When I figured out what was going on, I switched to a 3' top loaded fiberglass antenna, and my transmit/receive range was greatly extended. Was it the little wil's fault? No, I had put it in a place that, because of it being base loaded, doomed it from the get-go. I would expect any base loaded antenna to have that same issue in that spot. So, if you aren't getting responses, consider everything before you junk the antenna, because I've had two of them, and they both worked good for me as long as I didn't expect it to perform like a 102" whip and as long as I installed it in the right place.
Longest local contact with it was 15 miles to a friend on his base station with a stock radio. Now, given that his antenna is high, and given that it was a quite night, I wouldn't expect this on a consistent basis, but it worked. We talked for about 15 minutes and could understand each other no problem. This also happens to be my go to antenna for road trips when we take my wife's truck. Easy set up and take down, decent communication range on the road.