It sounds like you had a similar experience to us. Our trouble is that none of our pool designs coming in are exactly alike in perimeter and area, so it's a little harder to compare. I don't know why, but I was surprised that a bigger company would be cheaper, but that seems like what we may be finding. He mentioned that with the volume of sales, they can afford to have a lower profit margin. He mentioned theirs was around 12%. We liked his insurance, and the fact that since they've been around for awhile they should still be around if anything comes up that needs fixing in the future. I guess we are leaning towards using them too, but not all the bids are in yet. We also need to make the pool a little smaller or something, because as beautiful as he's designed it, with our added options, it's a little more than we want to spend.
Just courious, what did he put in the "owners discount" box on your spreadsheet? He's got 8% down for us and that was after he asked us when we wanted to build and we said it would be in the fall or later. It seemed like it might have helped us out a little, but I don't know what he had been intending to put there!
Keep us posted on what you decide. I'll enjoy keeping up with your progress.