Valid Charges?

18 years ago

I have a house in New Orleans that was not damaged from the Hurricanes. I am residing in another state and trying to sell this other house. One item that was identified on a recent inspection was the floor beneath a 2nd floor toilet was "rotten" and may needed to be replaced.

I contacted a plumber who was willing to do the work. I have no history with this plumber. He charges $80/hour and made two visits to the house. The first was to remove the toilet and confirm that the floor was bad. He requested that I hire a carpenter or someone to remove the damaged area. He needed access around the drain so he could remove a section of lead pipe that joined the toilet to the drain. (My words, not his). He went back out (2nd time) and used a torch to remove the lead piece of pipe.

The person who did the carpentry work finished up and replaced the toilet, so the plumber was not needed. When I received the invoice for the two visits the charge was $415.00. I do plan on paying him, since he did the work. When questioned as to the high charge and why he didn't call to inform me he reminded me that I had told him to do what needed to be done.

This seems outrageous to me but, I am not a plumber. If you agree, what if any recourse might I have.

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Comments (6)

jason1083
18 years ago
well if you question the charges just ask for an invoice showing time & materials. But to pull a toilet and remove & replace a section of pipe that is not real bad price. Some areas of the country always have higher labor costs.
ctghost
Original Author
18 years ago
Per my original post I did receive an Invoice and it did show their time and materials based upon $80/hour.

Thanks for responding
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lazypup
18 years ago
$80/hr is about average for the industry.

Just before I retired I was charging $80/hr and i was overwhelmed with work so I decided to increase my price to $95/hr in the hope that would slow things down. Silly me, rather than slow things down, it just increased the financial status of my customer base....LOL.

Now that I am retired I still get people who bug me about doing "just this one for them". I have even told people that since I retired I do occassionally take on a job but I really don't want it. One the other hand, if they are willing to pay $135/hr and understand that at my age i work much slower than I used to, i guess I could consider it and believe it or not, i still get people who want me to go ahead.
juukie
18 years ago
I live in the NYC area , I was charged $1799.00 for a 4' x 5' sheet lead for a shower stall , Istallation of a new cast iron showerdrain and adjustable strainer and installation of the lead pan...
Labor was 4 hrs; on the receipt counted as 6 hours ( travelling was included)..
The charge seems very high ....Your thoughts would be very apreciated ..
Thank you...
peteinsonj
18 years ago
juukie -- you ought to start your own thread. its called "thread crapping" when you jump on someone else's thread. that said, I live in northern NJ, the price seems reasonable, however, in my area lead pans are no longer allowed -- and would not pass code -- did the town inspector approve this? --pete
mikie_gw
18 years ago
Local long established small shop Plumbers here gets $100 hr plus an initial service charge of $70 which I guess helps cover some basic overhead of scheduling, getting to from the job, tools/truck, insurance/fuel, you know, actual real costs they dont actually try to break out on the invoice.

Then they mark their material costs up about 3x. Gets expensive fast.