home water filtration question and experience w/ culligan

so we had 27 power outages in 3 hours due to storms a couple weeks back that fried the water filtration system that came with our house.

woke up the next morning (because this shite always happens at 2am right?) and saw all the UPS notifications in my email (which is how i was able to tell how many times it happened) and noticed we had no water pressure.

uh oh i thought this is going to be ugly. so i went into the sub-basement and could hear water just GUSHING and so i walked around looking for evidence of a leak but eventually traced it back to the water filtration system; i could tell it was stuck in backwash mode and was just WIDE OPEN since roughly 3am.

so i manually turned the little plastic gears and got it to bypass the system altogether and called culigan who i found some old invoices for in the desk drawer.

so they came out and determined the power outage fried the electronics and so it was stuck in backwash mode with no way to fix it.

they also confirmed it was no longer their system but something the homeowner had replaced along the way. It *looked* impressive, a big 5 foot scuba tank looking thing but...

at this point i could have had them remove it entirely and reconnect the line or discuss other options.

***

so they started w/ the "time share" highest-price first option and went down the path..

Option 1 was new filtration & softening system (that uses their 'special' salt :/ instead of tractor supply pellets) that was like $5K

Option 2 was a used version of #1 which was around $2300 installed.

Option 3 was 'rent forever' at $30/mo for the system in #1

Option 4 was a whole home filtration system for $499 that needs a new filter once a year.

I went with option 4. I am spoiled from having the chlorine & stuff out of our water and honestly, i don't know how well that old system was even working.


So here's the fun part; when they put in the new system, the took the old tank out...and basically that impressive metal tank was a **SHELL** it was just a cover over what was essentially just a filter system made to look intimidating and expensive. he pulled that cover off and it was just a little cartridge system.


anyway, long story short, i went ahead & put in a fairly basic system w/o the extra reverse osmosis and softening crap and since the service call was going to cost $200 anyway, having them go ahead & put that in meant they waived the $200 and just charged me straight up $500.


csb;cad;dr bought a lower tier water system and curious if anyone else has this and has any thoughts or if i just paid $500 for snake oil?