This one surprises people who moved across the river. Rio Rancho and Albuquerque are twenty minutes apart and they are not on the same water.
Albuquerque
The Water Authority serves a blend: treated San Juan-Chama surface water mixed with groundwater from both sides of the river. Hardness is published per distribution zone and described by the utility as ranging from moderately hard to hard.
Rio Rancho
Rio Rancho runs its own utility and pumps its water from deep groundwater wells. No surface-water blend. That is a different supply with a different mineral profile, and it does not move around the way a blend does.
And then there are the wells
Plenty of Corrales, Placitas, Bosque Farms and the East Mountains is on private wells. Out there the complaint is usually not hardness at all — it is iron staining fixtures orange, or sulfur making the hot water smell. A softener on its own will not fix either of those, and anyone who tells you it will is guessing.
Why it changes the quote
A system sized for an Albuquerque address is not automatically the right system in Rio Rancho, and neither of them is right on a Placitas well. We ask where you are and we test before we recommend anything. It is the difference between selling you equipment and solving your problem.