Pretty much.....or very close to it, for years and years carpet was always figured by the sq yd, acouple years ago companies started figuring it by the sq ft. This confuses the consumer, $3 a sqft sounds like a much better deal than $12-15 a sqyd, when actually your paying more than you would for a decent piece of carpet w/ pad and install.
The squares are easy to install and designed for a "do it yourselfer" but it's night an day compared w/ installed goods. The squares are designed for very small areas not room size.
To figure the difference between sqft vs sqyd just take your sqft / 9 and that will give you the sqyd. So if you have 100sqft of carpet @ $3 per sqft thats $300.00. Now based on that same figure it comes out to 11.1 sqyds which is $27.09/yd for carpet WHICH IS HIGH DOLLAR STUFF!!!! THATS JUST FOR THE CARPET ALONE.
So yes you can get carpet installed for less than that figure.
I do Floor covering so I see this alot.