Water Softeners and Air Filtration Systems - New Softener help - purchase online?

It's finally time to bite the bullet and replace our 10 year old Rainsoft. I really don't want to go with them again, but they offer a "not bad" deal to "upgrade" the equipment. The Culligan man was here today and his "deal" was $2400. Kind of rich for my blood.

I've seen some sites that sell "quality" (according to them) equipment on line. Specifically budgetwater.com . Does anyone have any experience with them, or know a reputable budget dealer? We would have to hire a plumber to install as we just are not that handy, but the budgetwater guy says a system for our house would be in the neighborhood of $500-600.

Any input? This is all very confusing!

:o Never heard of them, then again, I don't do business on line with an item that important....think of this....would you buy a car on line just by looking at the picture?....who services it?.....who has parts?....how long will they be around?.....if a 5 to 6 hundred system is what you are looking for then my suggestion would be to go to Sears or Home Depot to buy the same thing.....there may be different bells and whistles, but you will at least have a person to talk to and a location to go to when things go wrong.

I would (and did) consider buying my softerner online and glad I didn't. I contact several local companies to replace the Culligan unit that stopped working. They charged ~30% over the online price which included delivery,setup, installation, & replacement the next day. The softener shell (that never leaks or has problems) had 3 leaks in it after it was connected. They installed a replacement the next day. If we had bought it online there would've been severals days delay & hassle to ship the defective one back and get a replacement.

I'd look in the yellow pages for a local dealer, not a national chain. Mine was very willing to beat national chains, but they couldn't compete with the web with delivery and installation. Saved me installation, setup, ... and other issues.

ymmv

Glad to hear it....what did you end up buying?