Aggie61 : Personally I think you are making a serious serious mistake buying a Hobie online vs your local dealer. We have heard several terrible horror stories of people buying online and shunning their local dealers. As far as avoiding sales tax goes, I am totally against that, the sales tax you pay goes towards the local improvements for such things as the great kayak parks we have in Sarasota, great boat launches, without these tax revenue these things go away (nothing in this world is free). I have bought 7 Hobies from the Dealer you mention in Sarasota (Economy Tackle), they are the best and most knowledgeable people I have ever met and bend over backwards when it come to customer service and satisfaction. Typically when you buy a boat from them (and most dealers), they will all typically give you discounts on accessories. Getting a personal demo like you did is not ordinary for them, and kind of out of norm. They typically have monthly Demo days once or twice a month, where you can go out to a local kayak park and try out any of their boats. This is the preferred way to do it (that's what we did). We tried out 3 or 4 different boats and ended up buying an Oasis, and a Revolution, but we tried out the sport, the outback, and a couple others, then decided which boat fit our needs the best. You kind of need to do that because everyone is different sizes and have different needs, and there are quite a few differences between different boat types that are not apparent until you actually try them. I can give a perfect example, when looking at the revo in the store, we thought it too narrow and unstable, and had our eyes on the Outback. We don't fish or anything so all the Outback's specific fishing features would have remained un-used. Once we rode both boats it became apparent that the Revo was much more stable then we anticipated, and way faster than we ever imagined (like a rocket), where the outback though it appeared more stable, ended up being much slower and harder to maneuver in tight spaces, so we decided on the revo. If we had not gone to Demo Days and actually driven all the types and spoke in depth with the experts we would not have been happy. I can give you a dozen examples of them going out of their way to make problems easy and painless for us. Another example is when I tore the hull on my TI, I was at the launch pulling the TI onto shore, the dealer happened to be ten feet away demoing another TI with another customer, he saw me pull the boat about 8 feet, and saw the rull rip. He was on the phone right away and a new replacement hull was on the truck (from Hobie) the same day, and a few days later they called and said the new boat was ready. They had assembled the new boat for me and checked everything out, they even loaded the new boat onto my car and we left from there to our other house in Key West, our vacation was saved. They didn't have to do that. Another time I broke the weld on my scupper cart frame, I took it in, they just took another frame off the shelf, set it all up, mounting my wheels, and checked everything out, and I was on my way in 10 minutes, they didn't have to do that either. I recommend them also for any type of repairs like kayak welding, re-stringing rudder systems, fixing Mirage drives, just about anything kayak related, they are very good and knowledgeable. I spend quite a bit of time in Texas, and have been into ACK's store several times with my friends buying boats, I personally I trust these guys way more than ACK. The best part is they are just a phone call away for advise, If I have a problem with a misadjusted rudder line or something, I just call them and explain my problem, they explain exactly what to do if I want to adjust it myself, and always end the calls with, hey if you still are having a problem after doing this or that, just bring it in. Personally I think your making a huge mistake. Bob
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