Welcome to our forum.
Anyone else get the sense that when people report what they paid for their spa on these web sites they adjust the price down some to make everyone think they got a good deal. It's like when my friends go to vegas and come back and report their winnings. They always win. I'm not a fisherman but i just realized how much fishing, spa buying and vegas have in common. they all involve impulses, foolishness, and sometimes regret.
I guess my own personal thought has been along the same lines but reversed. I'm fairly well convinced that if you posted you just paid 12,500 for a grandee and delivery was extra and any other extras were at list price, several HS dealers would come along and say:"That is a good price, it's about $1000 lower than what we sell it for."
I know it is unprovable, but if Term sells for what he says he does, and I know what we sell for, there are, in fact, many times I see posts of Hot Spring prices that are about $1000 less than what some dealers sell them for.
We originally went to the Artesian dealer to look at the Grand Cayman. We got all the details and had lots of questions answered. We asked about the Piper Glen sitting right next to it. Seemed like a right nice spa, but was a couple thousand $$ difference. We wondered why anyone would pay more for it, when the Grand Cayman seemed like a perfectly good spa to us. Then.....we wet tested the Piper Glen and were in love! We never even had to question whether we thought it was worth the price difference. The only thing we questioned was whether we wanted to pay extra for the LED lights, which we decided "what the heck" since we were already over budget, why not go for it. We have never once questioned whether we paid too much for the spa. We are SO EXCITED about it, that to us, it is worth every penny we have paid......and we don't even have the spa yet!!!! People are usually willing to pay for things that they value....even overpay from time to time. Thanks to reading this web site, I feel like I made a well informed decision on my tub. I've heard only good things about Artesian and the Piper Glen. I get a great feeling from the dealer. Random customers that came into the store when we were there raved about them. Customers who have the Piper Glen that I called also raved about them. I can't wait to be soaking in my tub every night and being grateful that I spent the money that I did on it. Sometimes you say "It was expensive, but worth every penny and then some." I think that's how we're going to feel about this tub!!!!!