I was in Herriman, Utah today installing a water softener when the neighbor to my customer walked up and hit me with a point blank question: “Why does the price of a water softener vary so much from different suppliers? Why can I get a water softener from Home Depot for $500 and also get a bid from a water treatment company for $5,000?” I told him that he just hit upon probably the most common question that I get from my customers. Here is the reason why:
On the low end of the scale (big box retailers) it’s pretty easy to see what their game is. It is to be the lowest price point to attract the most buyers and many people there are that go down this road. I tell my customers to look at what they are getting for it. The best system you will get is a 1 year warranty system and when these systems need to be looked at or repaired homeowners can expect a few surprises:
1. Home Depot is not going to send out a repair man in an orange shirt to fix your water softener. Your system will be diagnosed and repaired by a third party.
2. Expect trip charges at least from this third party. They are not going to be coming out to your house for free
3. When you receive a repair bill for $300-$400 and you only paid $500 for the water softener in the first place you won’t be fixing anything. You will be replacing the water softener instead. (This is usually where homeowners call me. A lot of my business is replacing throw-away water softeners.)
4. If you do replace the water softener with another 1-year warranty system, you will pay a plumber twice as much to remove the old system and install a new one. Trust me, no one likes to remove a heavy old water softener from a basement.
The short version of this story is a very attractive entry price that will save you nothing at the end of the day. Why a homeowner would even want to get tangled up in this scenario I can’t understand.
On the other hand, you do have dealers out there that will charge you a sky-high price and hopefully you will get a better system than a big box store system, but in some cases, I am sorry to say, homeowners don’t even get the short end of the stick, they get none of the stick at all. There are only two reasons why any homeowner would ever get a $5000 or even a $6500 price for a water softener and that is:
A. The water treatment dealer smells blood in the water and really wants to gouge the homeowner.
B. The water treatment company is an extremely inefficient company with a ton of overhead and they want to pay for that overhead and their inefficient company.
At Royal Water Systems we keep a few commitments:
· We will not sell junk. We do not sell 1-year warranty systems at all. We do not import any water systems. If we can’t put a water softener in your house that won’t just do its job and do it for years on end without any problems, we are not interested.
· We will not sell inefficient water softeners that are salt hogs. A timered water softener is not even in our inventory
· By only installing quality made systems we can greatly reduce our overhead. We do not need a host of repairmen. We do not need a fleet of motor vehicles for those repairmen. We do not need to pay for the human resources, or insurance for the repairmen or the vehicles.
· We will keep the front end of our business just as efficient and free from overhead has the back end. By embracing technologies that allow our offices to function seamlessly.
· By doing a combination of all of the above we will offer the best water softener or water treatment equipment for the lowest possible price.
· We will not leave any customer behind, but we will stand behind the products we sell and install and offer a level of after-installation service that is acceptable to our customers.
We invite you to give us a call today and set an appointment. Without the pressure of a high paid salesman we will help you make your water exactly what you want it to be. You’ll find us to be about half the price of high paid, inefficient water treatment dealers. You’ll get an excellent water softener customized to your specific water. You’ll get excellent follow-through service after the installation. Isn’t that what you’re looking for?
All the best,
Sam Nielsen
Royal Water Systems
801-850-1839