Monday morning my showerhead misbehaved! No it was not talking back or anything, just water started streaming out from the side of the showerhead. I have some “Mr. Fix it” skills but after about 20 minutes of taking the thing apart (and putting it back together) it was clear that a major failure had occurred. Only solution was to get a new showerhead.
Of course we bought a rather pricy model made by Grohe (I know I had never heard of them either till our plumber advised that this was the thing for us…). So this afternoon, I finally called the plumber (very nice by the way), the receptionist I spoke to immediately told me that she could order the part, but it would be 40% surcharge fee – for their trouble, and I might as well contact their distributor and get the part myself.
Contacted the distributor, not a very pleasant guy, in fact he told me that I had to come in person (despite using a credit card), and because they don’t deal with this company very much it would take a month and there would be a surcharge. Total cost $512.65 for the showerhead alone.
I told him that I would see him tomorrow, but then went on the internet www.faucetdirect.com, and I found the exact same showerhead for $145.23, with shipping charges and taxes the total will be $199.72 and it will be delivered next Monday.
So if I had bought the part from my plumber it would have cost almost $700 dollars (worse case scenario – and my plumber suggested that I contact the distributor anyway), instead I purchased a replacement for $199.72, a 70% discount. There are two morals to this story: (1) An honest plumber saved me a lot of money, and (2) in the age of the internet, distributors are redundant.
I just love the internet