…you get up early to meet some guy who’s going to give you a bid on a walk-in shower install. It’s awful. Friendly enough, nice to the dogs, the guy talks and talks, gives you his whole history, compliments your house, looks at the bathroom, takes a number of measurements with a fancy laser gadget, and then just blurts out casually that the job will cost $20,000. You say to him, see, this is the problem with your company’s business model. And you told the scheduling woman on the phone this very thing, that you didn’t like that they deliberately withhold any specific information about the prices for a particular product, not even a vague range; you didn’t like that they would simply try to get inside your home where they would be extremely nice to you and give you a hard sell regarding the exclusivity of their work and how no other company can match them. The scheduling woman, of course, insisted they would not do that. But that’s exactly what they did. You’re pissed. You and your wife essentially tell the guy to leave. He’s defensive, combative, condescending, tries to teach you about how money works. He insists he has to write up the numbers before he leaves. So he sits at the dining table with your equally livid spouse and silently fills out a stupid form. It’s awkward. I suppose the awkwardness could have been avoided if you were simply more magnanimous, if you just let the guy do his thing, present his stupid numbers, and then just not hired him without saying a word. But there’s something satisfying about telling someone straight up what you think. And to a degree, in the right circumstances, people need to be told. It’s hard to do, though; you were uncomfortable, your heart was racing, but you weren’t mean to the guy. You simply told him that it was too expensive and it was not cool that you had no indication before the guy arrived, no idea what the bid might look like, that everyone’s time was wasted.
A friend of mine the other day said that he thought money was imaginary. This is mostly true. Numbers on a piece of paper. Numbers in a spreadsheet. Numbers on a computer screen. Organized in a particular way, they’re terrifying. Take the same numbers, put them somewhere else, in some differently shaped box, and they are kinder, gentler. How about an $11,000 permit to simply bring water from one place to another place? How about a $12,000 replacement of a pipe in the ground? The difference between 21% interest and 9% or 5%? A bunch of credit cards or the same amount of debt in an equity loan? Just move the numbers around, put them in different kinds of boxes. It’s like magic. You just have to know the trick. But a shower install that costs the same as a brand new economy car? It becomes impossible to know the value of things any more.
However, you bought a new record album today for $38.99. When you were a little punk, you paid five or six bucks for a new album. As a young adult, maybe $12. You can’t buy as many records as you used to be able to buy, but you hardly bat an eye at paying nearly $40 for a record. You don’t balk at paying between $20 and $40 for a book. There is a part of you, though, that understands that prices for records and books are inflated. You’re still buying music. But you will draw a line; there are limits. Remember, you were interested in a Lana Del Rey album that was priced at more than $50. In that case, you said to yourself, I could stream that record to my heart’s content. And that’s what you did. You know what’s valuable to you, and it’s frustrating when someone tries to sell you a bill of goods, and infuriating when you have no control, when you must drop an ungodly amount of money so that water comes to your house and not into your back yard. You’re happy at least that today you had a choice, and you made the right one.
michael jarmer 
I often wonder if the walk-through affects the “cost.”
As in, these folks have a nice house, big lot, long driveway, nice piano sitting there, books on the shelves, nice bottle of whiskey in the liquor cabinet, married couple, no signs of kids running around, lots of vinyl next to that quality turntable, uhhhhhh …. $20K.
Maybe not, but, damn, those big round-number bids always strike me as suspicious.
In the end, he offered us a $2,000 discount! Still, all I had to do was google “how much does a shower unit installation cost” and learned that they average between 9 and 12 k. For all I know, this company does terrific work, but clearly their prices are inflated and their sales tactics a bit sketchy!