How much should I have paid for a new furnace/AC?

 We recently had a new gas furnace and central AC installed.  Paid about
$4700 from a local well known company for Rheem equipment (2-1/2 ton 10 SEER
AC and an 80% dual stage, variable speed 75,000 BTU (I think) furnace for a
1750 sq ft home).  It took two guys a good 7 hours to do the work.  We're in
upstate NY.

A second quote from another local company that's well known was anywhere
from $4700 to $6500 for Carrier equipment - depending on the efficiency
ratings.

A co-worker's husband does commercial HVAC for a school district and does
installs on the side.  He quoted me for $3700 for a similar Rheem
installation.

A neighbor across the street does HVAC for a living - saw the vans parked
out front and later on out of curiosity asked me how much we paid - and said
he would have come under the quote from my co-worker's husband.

I don't have buyer's remorse - I was ready to go with the co-worker's
husband, but my father-in-law is also our State Farm agent and he had
insurance concerns and all that good stuff since the co-worker's husband
wasn't bonded/insured/licensed to do the work independently.  My wife didn't
doubt the quality of his work or if he would stand behind it - her concern
was if the installation was faulty she wanted deeper pockets to go after if
something went horribly wrong.  Also would he stand behind his work at 2am
in January?

I didn't bother asking the neighbor for a quote first because of something
went wrong with the install or if I went with someone else - I wouldn't want
problems with him down the road.  As a rule I don't do business with
friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, etc... - would rather deal with a
person I'll likely never see again - not mix business with pleasure - and
deal with someone who has deeper pockets should something go wrong and we
have to go into litigation.

I think what we paid was probably in the mid-range of what I could have
shelled out.  For our house, a higher efficiency system would unlikely pay
for itself over what we had installed.

Did I get ripped - or was the $4700 I paid on par?

  Did any of them do the actual calculations to verify the size of the
equipment they were installing or did they just replace what you had with
the same size stuff.  If they did not do the calculations, they were all
worthless estimates and unfortunately typical of the industry in most areas.

 There are way too many variables here to say if you really paid too
much.  For example, was there any duct work involved and if so how
much?  Is it in a basement, crawl space, or attic?  It shouldn't be a
suprize to you if they charge more to put it in a crawl space or attic!
 We also don't know how reputable the company is and if they did
quality work and set it up properly. 10 SEER sounds low, but since your
in upstate NY I doubt that matters much since you won't be using A/C a
lot.

 To answer the first question yes, they did do the calculations.

No new duct work - all existing (house is only 22 yrs old) and was done down
in the basement.

It rarely gets above 90 degrees here in the peak of summer and the humidity
level is usually comfortable - so there wasn't a need for a high SEER AC
unit.  Seeing that the central AC was a new addition (we didn't have it
before), 10 SEER is better than the no SEER that we had!!

 
message

yrs old) and was done down

didn't have it

we had!!

These statements disturb me about yoour installer.
No previous A/C and you didn't need at least a
couple of returns? I guess you won't notice you
need them if you don't use the A/C.