Buying Hot Tub on Ebay??

[Chas]

Brew - I don't call buying a spa through Home Depot a 'local purchase,' and here's why:

The bigbox stores handle tubs through a national or regional program. As such, they simply open a truck one day and its full of spas. They have a place assigned to display the tubs, and somebody usually comes in to see to it that there are brochures and info sheets. In some cases there is a local supplier, but they may be responsible for stores over a large area, and they are only really worried about making the chain store head office people happy, not the end user.

Bottom line: nobody at the store is a spa expert, nobody can teach how to care for the tub, nobody can even show you how to properly connect it and/or start it up.

Finally - let's face it: if several folks have problems trying to get after-sale service, it certainly isn't going to hurt Home Depot. But if I or another local dealer starts getting a reputation for not taking care of problems, we lose everything.

[gobucks145]

As I've stated before. I bought a hot tub on ebay and am satisfied with it thus far. I knew I was taking a chance, but I did some research, checked out the company selling them and talked to the company people. Checked out the service, warranty and such. Before I made my purchase I compared what I was getting for what I was spending to other spas and companies. As of right now I'm very happy with my purchase. I've had it over a year with no complaints whatsoever!

[Spatech_tuo]

I knew I was taking a chance, but I did some research, checked out the company selling them and talked to the company people. Checked out the service, warranty and such. Before I made my purchase I compared what I was getting for what I was spending to other spas and companies.

Unless that research was talking to multiple people who actually owned the product it doesn't mean much. You'll only get positive answers from the sellers but what else could be expected and even with the buyers, it really matters if they've owned them a couple years and can atest to their quality and reliability. As far as the warranty and service, again, unless you spoke to multiple spa owners who have actually had issues resolved under warratny (and I doubt you'll find this, at best you can hope they send you the part for you to fix it) all you'll get is promises of warranty and service and maybe a piece of paper faxed to you that only means they created a warranty sheet.