Well, at the start of our search for a tub we invited a sales rep from Thermospa and we met him on Saturday January 10th of this year at our house. Let me share this with you. RUN........ RUN AWAY from that individual and never invite anyone from that company again.
May sound like I am biased but after spending an hour and a half with one of their sales rep ........ well since some of you asked, here is my story. I'll keep it short!
Ding dong. Open the door and greet the sales rep. Pleasant enough, show him where the tub is going to go. Very nice he says, invite him to sit down in the living room and offer coffee which he accepted. He spots some literature on the coffee table that are publications from other Hot Tub manufacturers (Sundance, D1, Jacuzzi, Beachcomber, Caldera, and a few others that we had downloaded information on but had not yet visited in a show room. He acknowledges these publications and makes a cursive comment about Thermospas being the leader among all of the hot tubs shown on our coffee table.
The next hour was nothing more than a comparitive presentation of Thermospas' superiority over all of the aforementioned.
At the one hour mark he pulled out some prices on Thermospas but zoned in on one that he highly recommended for us as that model best 'fit our needs'. He continued as he began writing up an offer which consisted of two prices. One that was his special of today and the other which was his regular price on the same sheet.
And that is where it went from bad to worse. The pressure tactics of a sharlatan, (tell you the truth he wasn't even really good at that). No longer was he speaking about the superiority of Thermospa over the others, but rather that he was offering us a unbelievable deal and that it was only available that day and that we needed to provide him with a deposit of 50%. So why delay???
The 'special' was $14825 including taxes, cover, lifter, step, coloured lens?
and some chemicals. Basically he was looking for $7,412.50. I looked at my wife (we had by now read each others mind) and discussed the fact that should we do this we would need to transfer money from our GIC's to our chequing account and that would take a few days so we could not cover the cheque. He thought about this a nano second and informed us that he could sit on the cheque a few days and he would speak to the sales manager about this special situation.
Done deal he thought, so he began to finalize the sales order, when I began asking him about rumors and stories about warranty, production quality, customer support, etc.... to which he responded, and I quote 'we have a no fault bumper to bumper 7 year warranty' and 'whenever a client has a problem, Thermospa is there within 48 hrs'.
I pulled a printout of several websites that had sooooooo many consumer complaints about Thermospas that I lost count and asked him about that. (I had literally downloaded these that morning, thank the spa gods) His explanation, get this, that it was most likely their competitors that were putting up these posts in an attempt to discredit their product.
I thanked him for his time and said that we would think about it but that prior to purchasing a hot tub we would need to wet test his product. He explained that that was impossible as he sold his tubs direct from the manufacturer and that was why he could offer us such a great deal. He twiced tried to interject so that we would commit and he then informed us that if we signed, he would obtain the permission of a owner near us so that we could wet test their Thermospa. Logic in that?
I responded that that was a little stupid! Like putting the cart before the horse.
We, to his major dissapointment, did not sign. He was quite agressive at the end trying to get us to sign. We never kept track but he did call a number of times to inquire about our decision. I finally told him that we had bought the Sundance Optima, to which he responded 'good luck, you'll need it'.
BTW, if there are any Thermospa owners out there who are happy with their tub, I apologise to you about this post. Anybody else want to take it up with me about my trashing Thermospa, bring it on. IMHO and sales experience, they are absolutely the worst and will not apologise about that.
Would you buy a car without driving it first?
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