I believe I was price gouged for a repair of 2 foot pvc pipe

[Wiggums1]

 

[Twowaxhack]

I use those same boxes. Have you had trouble keeping the dividers in place ? The gray boxes

I’m thinking about making my own.

 

[Wiggums1]

 

[Wiggums1]

I use those same boxes. Have you had trouble keeping the dividers in place ? The gray boxes

I’m thinking about making my own.

I duct tape the dividers down b4 placing parts in them

 

[Wiggums1]

 

[Wiggums1]

 

[Wiggums1]

 

[Wiggums1]

I have a little of everything that we commonly use.
a place for all tools from main line snake, 3/8 snake, drills, saws, hand tools, inverter from vehicle battery & charging station for all the power tools. Heck, I even have a microwave and chill box for lunches.
I built my baby after struggling out of something ....less.... for years, and deciding to take the time to make my dream work truck. Supply house runs are a thing of the past. I inventory it, scan it on use, and auto re-stock it. Much less time spent getting parts, much more time spent making customers happy, and making great money doing it.

 

[Twowaxhack]

One of the most complete repair trucks I’ve ever seen. I like it.

 

[Twowaxhack]

When you’re stocked and organized you can do twice the work with half the hassle.

Do you realize that it is actually the guy that price gouged me that is in fact really bad for your business though. At least for honest plumbers out there. Here's why. Because now I will never trust a plumber again to step foot in my house. It just isn't worth it when the money I get paid at my job is not nearly $600/hr so I am willing to learn and do the job myself even if it would take much longer (in this case I had done similar repair and it took just as long). What that means for other honest licensed plumbers is that they get less work as people either start DIY or delegate the work to an unlicensed handyman which is what my neighbor did. In other words, the money he gouged from me today will ultimately be taken away from another plumber tomorrow. Plumbers here get upwards of $300/hr. Is that really not enough to get by for someone where they have to start gouging.

I had already called their company in complaints to their practices. Still waiting for their callback but am sure I wont be getting any money returned from this. Lesson learned.

it doesn’t matter that you don’t get paid $600 an hour Just like it wouldn’t matter if you got paid $5,000 at your job per hour.,

I’m not concerned with people who do not want to spend what I charge. I hang up on them.

If the law was broken then I hope you’re made whole, otherwise you’re just another person with buyers remorse.

I’m not going to judge the morality of it.

 

[Wiggums1]

Yes I agree that price should match the value of service that it would bring to a customer. However this should not be the case during a weather emergency situation where millions are without water and struggling through something that is no fault of their own. Because now the demand that is creating that excess value is fueled by people suffering. You are no longer only providing plumbing services at that point but also in the business of leveraging the crisis and profiting off of peoples struggles. That is where the unethical part comes in. Price gouging is illegal btw, just really hard to prove in court like in this case but obvious to the layman when they look at the ridiculous cost of it vs what other same skill plumbers would charge. But even if it was legal, that does not make it ethical of course.

If a plumber is charging too much, and providing a poor quality of service, the word will get out and he will go out of business.
On the other hand, is it the plumbers fault that there is now so much of a demand on his time that he doesn’t even get to go home & see his family? Why not allow economics to rule? Something is only worth what you are willing to pay for it. If you are willing to pay the price of doing it yourself, great. If paying $500 to get water back after 3 weeks was worth it, who cares how long it took him?
I personally would have charged maybe $150 - $200 for that job, and it would have looked a LOT better when I was done, had I done it during regularly scheduled hours, as a scheduled job. If a Customer comes at me and says they need it right now, but I am two weeks out, then my price automatically doubles (regardless of the time of day) because I have to put someone else off that was already on my schedule.

 

[Twowaxhack]

It’s hard to believe you lived in a house without water 3 weeks without even looking at the problem but you say that you’ve made PVC repairs yourself.

You couldn’t see the water pouring out on the side of your house ? Why would you think it’s underground ?

How did you flush the toilets and take showers ?

 

[Twowaxhack]

You can’t tell a steakhouse they can’t sell their steak for $100 because waffle house sells them for $10

I mean you could try but I doubt you’d get taken seriously.

 

[AEHadi]

It’s hard to believe you lived in a house without water 3 weeks without even looking at the problem but you say that you’ve made PVC repairs yourself.

You couldn’t see the water pouring out on the side of your house ? Why would you think it’s underground ?

How did you flush the toilets and take showers ?

Not sure why that's hard to believe. Many here in Texas are in similar situations. We have buckets that we would refill through that spigot you saw in the pic. To flush toilets you can pour 3 gallons of water in the toilet. For showers We would heat water in the stove and I hooked up a water pump in the bucket with vinyl tubing.
I thought it was underground cause the water looked somehow like it was also shooting up a bit from the base of the ground. Like I said though, if I saw it was pvc I would have done it myself. Insulation had completely covered it so I thought it was more complicated. I am kicking myself for not doing it but I guess in my defense, when insurance tells you that if you make something worse by your own repairs they wont cover it anymore, it made me think to not want to deal with it.

 

[Twowaxhack]

Just seems to me that you would’ve walked over to the water spray and saw that it was just pvc and you’ve made pvc repairs before.

3 weeks is a long time to me to shower out of a bucket if I’ve done plumbing before and not investigate just a tiny bit.

what the insurance company doesn’t know, I’m not telling them.,

One thing I will say. Your story is consistent. Everything in your story as a whole makes perfect sense to me. From you not checking the problem to him charging 600 then you complaining about it. All that is textbook.

Its also an example of why I didn’t load up and come to work for Texas. I figured there would be problems getting paid.

 

[bbp]

Flat rate pricing is all about charging for the (value of a service), not for (the time it takes to provide that service).
If a price was given up front, accepted by the customer, & the service was provided, then it was obviously worth it for the customer to have that service provided, regardless of how long it took.

You can make a legitimate arguement that the job looks sloppy, that PVC may or may not be legal inside a building (it is NOT where I come from), or that the technician did not put the insulation back on the pipe. However, in my eyes, if the “job” was to get the customer back in water, if the price was discussed & agreed upon ahead of time, and if the job was compleeted successfully (customer has water again), then the price should stand.

It costs a LOT (time, schooling, etc.) to become a plumber, let alone to set up and run a legitimate plumbing business. If you go to a doctors office and expect them to perform an hour long surgery for less than thousands, you’re delusional. Why expect to pay less for a plumber? In my case, I am coming in with a $200k fully stocked & outfitted vehicle, contractor license that took me 8+years to obtain, 20+ years of experience, liability insurance, and all the other things it takes to run a successful plumbing business. Those things cost, there is no reason for me to struggle month-to-month because I don’t feel like charging appropriately for my services.

AMEN Brother!

 

[AEHadi]

If a plumber is charging too much, and providing a poor quality of service, the word will get out and he will go out of business.
On the other hand, is it the plumbers fault that there is now so much of a demand on his time that he doesn’t even get to go home & see his family? Why not allow economics to rule? Something is only worth what you are willing to pay for it. If you are willing to pay the price of doing it yourself, great. If paying $500 to get water back after 3 weeks was worth it, who cares how long it took him?
I personally would have charged maybe $150 - $200 for that job, and it would have looked a LOT better when I was done, had I done it during regularly scheduled hours, as a scheduled job. If a Customer comes at me and says they need it right now, but I am two weeks out, then my price automatically doubles (regardless of the time of day) because I have to put someone else off that was already on my schedule.

I am unsure first why you made the points of the plumber not going home to their families. that is a choice of their own unrelated to the increase in demand. They are of course not being forced to work overtime correct? If they choose to make more money by working more time, well isn't that simply their choice?

I know we are moving into economics and political ideologies at this point. At this point it's just a discussion that I am ok having if you guys are, not so much about my plumbing pricing question anymore.
Here is why you don't let the economics, i.e. capitalism, rule in such scenarios, or why they've made price gouging illegal. It all has to do with free markets and the oxymoron of accepting monopolies within these markets. When non-essential goods and services have higher demands with constant supply, it is normal for their supply demand intersection to increase higher prices. Naturally, competition will eventually ramp up the supply to push down prices to a reasonable price point. However, this does not happen during times of crisis for essential goods and services. When such a crisis arises, in the face of zero regulations or morality, the price of those goods skyrocket to whatever price people will be willing to pay. Think about the Martin Shkreli incident where big pharma charged crazy amounts for life-saving drugs. The problem is that in such crisis, the free market breaks down as the sellers of those limited essential resources become the monopolists. Without any government regulation or moral judgments, the monopolist will place their self interest of monetary gain over human value. In my example, the plumber became the monopolist for my essential need for running water. Could I shop around for better costs? No because all other plumbers I called said they would not arrive until weeks later, hence the limited supply. At that point the plumber knew that I would have no choice but to either accept the offer or wait potentially weeks longer.
There is more to of course but IMO that is where generally the main point stops and your own personal ideology kicks in. For me, I am not ok with monopolies valuing monetary gain over human value, but that's what price gouging is.

If there is any take away from my experience or from this thread is to at least stop someone else from thinking it is "ok to charge whatever someone is willing to pay" within the contexts of emergencies that deem your service as essential.

 

[Twowaxhack]

The plumbers had choices not to work and you had a choice not to hire.
You haven’t proved price gouging. That is a legal term when considering if the law has been broken.

You were not in an emergency situation. You were taking showers and flushing.

The emergency situation was no heat for most Texans. That’s what I’d be complaining about.......not the guy who turned my water back on.

The reason you had to wait three weeks is because no one wants to pay what it costs for guys like me to come help, you consider it price gouging. So I stayed home.

 

[AEHadi]

The plumbers had choices not to work and you had a choice not to hire.
You haven’t proved price gouging. That is a legal term when considering if the law has been broken.

You were not in an emergency situation. You were taking showers and flushing.

The emergency situation was no heat for most Texans. That’s what I’d be complaining about.......not the guy who turned my water back on.

The reason you had to wait three weeks is because no one wants to pay what it costs for guys like me to come help, you consider it price gouging. So I stayed home.

You don't consider running water an essential need? Yikes. The amount of time we spent everyday gather water for those flushes and for heating those showers while struggling both of us to carry fulltime jobs with side work all the meanwhile not being able cook(dishes would need cleaning), clean clothes, shower properly and constantly having to go out to refill buckets. And I would still consider us fortunate compared to other stories of people in worse conditions dealing with the damages of the storm. Essential service does not mean life or death btw. I don't think people should live like we did nor the way worse off people are living from the damages. plumbing services are considered essential.
It is ok if you don't consider my case as price gouging. I'm not trying to prove my case to you. Simply hoping if and when you and others run into a case where people are hurting from a crisis or just struggling in general even, that you don't see this as an ok time to make some extra money.

 

[Twowaxhack]

You don't consider running water an essential need? Yikes. The amount of time we spent everyday gather water for those flushes and for heating those showers while struggling both of us to carry fulltime jobs with side work all the meanwhile not being able cook(dishes would need cleaning), clean clothes, shower properly and constantly having to go out to refill buckets. And I would still consider us fortunate compared to other stories of people in worse conditions dealing with the damages of the storm. Essential service does not mean life or death btw. I don't think people should live like we did nor the way worse off people are living from the damages. plumbing services are considered essential.
It is ok if you don't consider my case as price gouging. I'm not trying to prove my case to you. Simply hoping if and when you and others run into a case where people are hurting from a crisis or just struggling in general even, that you don't see this as an ok time to make some extra money.

I depend on other peoples unfortunate situation with their plumbing on occasion to make a living.

An oncologist does it every day and gets paid a fortune. Is cancer treatment essential ? Is it free ? Do you think a person with cancer is in a bad situation ?

You had water. What did the people do 300 yrs ago ?

No, running water is not essential. Being able to dispose of your waste and get clean is......You were able to do that, you just think it was too much work.

That’s an unfortunate attitude to have while having the money to spend to correct the problem.

$600 isn’t a lot of money. I think a PlayStation costs about that much doesn’t it ? I bet they cost $50 bucks to make.