houstontub

Depends what you are looking at, how much help (sales pitch) you need and what city you are in. I have owned 2 previous hot tubs and just purchased a 3rd through Sams Club. I would have liked to buy local, but talking to hot springs, jacuzzi, morgan and d1, I decided it was worse than buying a used car. One of the dealers wouldn't give a price unless I made an appointment to visit their "design center" which I suspect would be worse than sitting through a time share presentation. Unfortuantely the prices in my market are marked up too high. I would have gladly paid a premium up to 1K for one of those brands, but they wanted $4k more than what I paid. But I know I got what I paid for and didn't get ripped off by greedy dealers and commissioned sales people focusing on too high of a profit margin, especially in this economy. Besides the spa I bought is even made in my home state. There are a million independent spa repair people who can repair any brand - so recognize that while service from a dealer is worth something, it's not worth thousands because you can find people to fix it. In my case, even if I had to replace the entire spa pac, I would still have spent less $$ than buying a major brand through a dealer in Houston, TX. In fact my experience with these dealers was so poor that I have a lower image in my mind of the brand names I looked at. It also was so poor that I decided to join this forum and post about it.