Where I live, the installation was $899 plus $400 transportation fee. And did not include any "special handling" fees which I may have paid due to the small garage I had and the difficulty installers would have.
My installation quote also did not include shimming and anchoring lift to the floor.
I see that you are from Chicago, any major location like NYC, LA, etc will have similar prices. I am also from a major metropolitan area. The other issue is, the installer companies that I spoke to (3 of them) really did not sound at all very promising. The reality is, this type of service in these big cities usually dont have the same level of quality you would expect had you had this service done in a much smaller city or in a low cost location. I lived in Texas as well as midwest for several years and I can tell you these types of installation services or any other labor related work was tremendously different in quality. Take a car dealership for example. An average technician working at a BMW dealer's service here earns about 60k. That is a decent amount of income in a state like Oklahoma or Missouri whereas in northeast, with 60k, you are below poverty level. As a result, you get extremely bad service. You can eat food off the floor of a car dealerships' service department in midwestern states whereas the picture where I live is completely different.
$350 for installing a lift like this is a joke in my opinion. Where I live, in my particular neighborhood, they charge $200 to clean snow from your driveway. They charge $400/month to mow your lawn. They charge $20,000 to redo your driveway. I can go on and on. I am not in a very rich neighborhood. The cost of living here is just so expensive compared to rest of the country.
In my case, paying $2900 for a lift and then paying $1300 and still have a piss poor job done was not something I wanted to deal with and to be honest I am glad I didnt do the installer thing because with the number of issues Bendpak lift had and the special handling it required, if an installer did the install, the entire process would have been 2 or 3 times more difficult since now in addition to Bendpak, I would have to run after the installers.
