River_rider

I see the question of Costco hot tubs is coming up here quite a bit in the last few days so thought I'd offer our experience. We bought a Tub from Costco in mid-2006 and have used it continuously since then. It came with the cover, a radio/FM/CD/MP3 player, pop-up speakers, about 80 jets, two jet pumps, and a light that changes colors. We paid less than $4,000 for the tub and then spent about $1,000 putting in a wooden deck, electrical stuff, and concerete pad. I think the brand was 'Platinum.' It has been a great tub and we really like having a hot tub. The only thing that has ever gone wrong is a slow-blow fuse in the control box blew. It was a 25-amp fuse and I went down to Home Depot but all they had was a 30-amp fuse of the same type so I had to go to a non-chain hardware to get the right fuse. I replaced the fuse and it has been fine since then . Not sure why the fuse blew but maybe the time-delay fuses just get 'tired' after a couple of years of starts and stops. I bought two fuses in case I need another one. Maintenance has been really minor. About all I do is add chlorine every couple of days and change the filters every couple of months. I bought an extra set of filters and I just swap the new for the old and then clean the old ones at my leisure and then reinstall them at the next changeout. I don't know anything about the tubs that Costco is selling now but we have always had good luck with things we purchase at Costco. The Costco hot tub is the only hot tub we have ever had so we cannot compare to other brands but ours has been pretty good so probably others are similar. We looked at hot tubs only once at a hot tub store before we bought our tub from Costco. The tubs in the store were nice but were quite a bit more money than we were willing to spend.