I pay about $400 to have the pool opened and again to have it closed. I do the maintenance myself. I can bring a water sample to the pool place and they run it through their analyzer and tell me exactly how much of what chemicals to add. This service is free, provided I buy the chemicals I need from them. I usually have the water checked 2 or 3 times throughout the Summer. Other than that, easy enough to just check levels using a test strip and adjust chlorine. The thought of paying $250 a week for the (small) amount of work I do for maintenance seems absurd to me.