Due to the cold weather we've been having lately, it didn't take us long to realize that our furnace quit working yesterday. I know a thing or two about HVAC systems, but I'm no expert, so I decided to call one to come and deliver us from our plight. The fellow on the phone seemed really sympathetic and eager to help us out, and within 20 minutes, had someone standing on our doorstep, tools in hand. He quickly diagnosed the problem, our igniter needed replacing, and then he quickly replaced the part and got our heat up and running again. It was so quick, in fact, that I was a little taken aback when he wanted to charge us $390 for the job. The part itself cost $157, and then the rest consisted of labour and the new 6% GST. $210 dollars in labour for 15 minutes of work sounded to me like highway robbery, even though I've never actually been robbed on the highway.
I was given a bevy of reasons for the high cost, ranging from it being a holiday (which holiday it was, is either not recognized in our country, or not in our current dispensation anymore) to the rising cost of houses in Calgary, which seem to have hit the repairman industry the hardest. After some disputing and after being hung-up on twice by the same guy who was so cordial on the phone the first go around, I decided to give in and pay the outlandish fee. All I can say now is, I'm in the wrong business. $840 an hour sounds like a kings ransom compared to what I'm pulling down.
2 comments:
We understand your plight. Just towards the end of last year, the furnace in our house in town quit and we received a call from our tenants. We had a friend take a look at it and he told us to call Sears and tell them it was 'such and such a problem' and gave us a number to quote to them. We put in the call to Sears to have them come take a look and fix it. We explained what had happened and the guy on the phone told us he knew what it was and would be out right away. Well, the bill came to us later being over $900. Most of which was labour because the guy drove out from South Calgary (in the evening, which costs more), looked at the furnace and said he had to go BACK to South Calgary to get the part as he didn't have it with him. (Yes, this is after we already told him what the problem was). Most of the bill was for his travel time. Tyler argued that one down and we ended up splitting the cost of travel time with them.
All I can say is OUCH!
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