When our church's equipment began to become noticeably unreliable, we made the long overdue…read moredecision to replace it. We had a 25+ year old system that had been fixed, tinkered with, and hacked together to keep all the parts running, wires hidden behind walls, and over-all, not the easiest project to "go-it-alone."
Our board of directors wanted the cheapest option, naturally, so we priced parts out piece-meal, and several volunteers promised they knew what they were doing, and would install the system. Our initial quotes of $21,500 started to escalate as soon as we called the vendors, as hidden fees started to be tacked on, and sales reps kept trying to bamboozle us with "you'll need this piece of equipment as well," or "no, you don't want that, you want this." Finally, I had enough, and went to Lesmen's, and I am so glad that I did. They quoted me $25,000, which initially was met with resistance by the penny-pinchers on our board, questioning why their price was higher than on-line sources. Here's what we ultimately got that we didn't factor in:
1.) We got exactly what we needed, and nothing more, but more importantly, nothing was over-looked. Every cable, connection, and component that we needed was installed in a matter of two weeks from evaluation to installation.
2.) Nobody thought about the fact that we needed an electric crane to install the speaker arrays. Lesmen's did! And they rented it in the included price.
3.) They're expertise knew exactly how much electricity each component would require, and they worked with us on placing each piece to run on the right circuit breakers to avoid having to hire an electrical engineer to upgrade one box, or potentially risking overloading a box had we done it ourselves.
4.) When, not if, issues arose, they were on site, and knew exactly what the issue was, even when it was human error.
5.) Their installation included a three-hour training session with our staff, so each member of our team knew exactly how to operate each piece of equipment.
6.) Piece of mind. Not only did they assist in fine-tuning the system to ensure it sounded great for our first Sunday service, we also know that if anything goes wrong, they are right around the corner, and will be more than happy to assist in fixing any problem we may have.
Don't be fooled by on-line pricing. It doesn't include the much needed human touch.
