Plumbers FAT wallet !

There's an old story. Goes something like this. Company has a problem with a vital piece of equipment. They check it out, andcheck it out some more, they can't find the problem. They call on outside help. They search and search and can't find the problem. Equipment has been down now for days. Company is desparate. They call in a specialist. Specialist is there for 5 maybe 10 minutes, problem found and repaired. Company is thrilled, until they get the bill. $1000.00. Company is shocked, afterall the specialist was only there 10 minutes, max. Company demands an itemization.

Itemization:

Time for diagnosis and repair $ 50.00 Knowledge to diagnose problem $950.00

Your plummer has found a good specialialty. How long would it have taken for you to dig up the whole run of pipe to find the problem?

Oh. that's gotta smart!

OTOH the local municipality uses such a contractor to listen for leaks in the city water distribution system annually -- listens as you describe to pin them down after listening first via hydrants to determine where leaks have occurred -- finds a handfull every year w/ estimated leak rates, and the city digs'm up and repairs them, but the service pays as the cost of water lost is many times the cost of the service.

Of course there are the BIG leaks that give themselves away almost immediately too, but those, fortunately, are fewer.

Sounds like a second plumber in town should buy the equipment and go into business too at slightly lower rates.

Hey Steve, aren't you a Cairns tradesman?

Anyway, upon his arrival, he informs me that this exercise will

I make a couple of points here. First the plumber did the digging and the fixing. This is not fun. Also in order for you to fix the problem you would have had to dig a whole lot more. This is like having one of your customers gripe about the price of opening a safe when all you did was drill one tiny little hole.

Secondly how much would you have been charged if the plumbers would have been without the clever technology? They would have been there all day and torn up half your yard. You bill would have been even more. Conversly even if they had been there hunting for an hour or had to dig a lot deeper or faced a bear of a repair they stood ready willing and able to do the job.

He said he does around 5-8 jobs a day, and is so busy he

Quitcherbellyaken. Your wife gave you months to fix it yourself, and you chose to brew up another batch of homebrew, and find other things to occupy your time. You could have went and dug up the yard, ran to the hardware store 2 or 3 times, spent money on wrenches fittings and other stuff, and ended up with a sore back and weeks of landscape remediation work. :>)

Ha ha, you have me pegged Roger :-)), and of coarse you and the other guys are 100% correct in your assessment of this guys charges. But it still smarts when the money comes out of your own pocket, and not some one else's. Maybe I'm just a little jealous that he can go round charging that kind of money. Anyway, I gave him my card and told him I would give him a 'special' rate if he ever lost the keys to his car. I think about $498.00 should cover it. :-)

Better to pay a high price and have it done quickly and competently than lowball it and have them take forever to mess it up. I'm sure the $498.00 still smarts though.

Personally, I wouldn't have let him pick up a tool without first getting at least a rough estimate. ("How long is a piece of string?" does not qualify) If he refused to give me one, I'd call someone else.

If he's the only one who can do it, unfortunately he can charge what ever he wants. It's the American way - and you Ausies are more like us than you probably care to admit. :)

ALWAYS get a price first. Even if it's ballpark.

Let me ask you this... If the guy would have said something like, "It'll be a "$500 min for up to the first two hours and I can't see it taking any longer than that.", would you have still hired him? If not, what would have been "plan B"?

Now, let me ask you this... If he had been there for three hours and dug up your lawn in twelve different places would you have felt better about paying him $498 for solving your problem?

Next time, I'll bet you'l get a price first. Chauk it up as a $500 lesson.

It's like the mechanic who charged a customer $30 to adjust the idle on a carborator (remember carborators?).

The customer - outraged at being charged $30 for less than one minute's work, demanded an itemized invoice.

The mechanic handed him a bill that read as follows:

Turn screw... $1.00 Knowing what screw to turn and how far to turn it... $29

Do I think $498 is a lot of money for 10 minutes? You bet.

Being 1) a speciallist in solving that particular problem and 2) being the only game in town do I think he can set his own fee? You bet.

Bobby

Layman mostly-lurker here.

Steve, you might take solace from something that happened to me a few years back. My plumber was doing some work on one of my bathrooms, and received a cellular phone call. I couldn't help but overhear that it was his auto mechanic, apparently giving bad news about one of the plumber's vans. It was somewhat funny, in a perverse kind of way, to hear the plumber cringing at the cost estimate from the auto mechanic.

Art