Outboard Prices in the States

[SIR]

Just went thru an exercise of pricing a 115 Merc Opti, locally, in Vancouver and in Bellingham so I thought I'd share the results. Locally I could find the engine under a commercial program(1 year warranty) for $9600, in Vancouver it ran $9100 while in the states, under a retail program(3 year warranty) it was $7750 plus state tax which brought it up to $8400. The commercial program in the states is not available to Canadians but that would have made the cost $6750.

I decided to buy the motor in Vancouver as for the extra $700 I get a 1 year Canadian warranty which I can access locally to deal with any startup issues.

Kind ticked me off a little however to see that we are really getting screwed in Canada on outboard prices.... If we didn't have to pay the state tax as well as PST/GST it would be worth the drive but as it is it's probably a better deal to shop Canadian to have access to the warranty programs.

Hopefully this post saves someone else some time and effort

 

[waddy]

definatly saved time for us, we're looking at anew outboard for either this upcoming year or the next fall.... though we're looking yamaha [8D]

 

[SIR]

I was going to go with an Evinrude but by the time I added up the cost of new controls, guages and a trailer to get the boat to the dealer I decided to stick with another bolt on Merc.... hard to switch over from a $$$ perspective once you have yourself all set up one way

Good luck with the purchase, I'll keep my finger crossed that sometime next spring the Canadian distibutors have to adjust their prices, but it's not likely if they can control us via warranties :-(