Plumbers and Travel Time

Is it typical for a plumber to charge for travel time? I just got a bill for 1 1/2 hours or work plus another hour for traveling. Is this SOP? The paper I signed when the plumber left made no mention of travel time — only the 1 1/2 hours spent on site. Thanks.

housepoor

in General Discussion 11 years and 10 months ago

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curated | 11 years and 10 months ago

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Out of curiosity what did the plumbing job entail and what did the total bill end up being? http://brownstoner.staging.wpengine.com/curated

Arkady | 11 years and 10 months ago

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This sounds to me as if it’s a company w/ recent change in ownership because of the death of the founder & the new people are destroying the good will that’s been built up over a long time.

ellenlourie | 11 years and 10 months ago

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Seems this plumbing company did analyzed they costs and find out they are not making any money. They must do billing adjustments. Now some old customers will drop out, some will accept new form of billing and new customers will not know the difference. if this is a good quality company they will recover. At the end, they do pay their plumber to go from point A to point B, and if they will not pay this plumber he will quit. If they will not charge their customers for travel time, then owner of the company will have to bring money from his family, and his wife definitely will will not be happy. Anyway they absolutely must let you know of change in their billing rates and methods in advance before coming to your property.

eman134 | 11 years and 10 months ago

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complain to the company…if you are a 20 year client they should make an adjustment. Sounds like they hired a new very aggressive accountant for billing

housepoor | 11 years and 10 months ago

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OP here…actually it gets worse. The job ticket I signed off on showed the plumber arrived at 9am. Exactly when the appointment was for. The copy they included with the bill had been changed to show 8am. So I can’t really be sure they are adding travel time or simply tried to rip me off. Plus they charged $43 for materials…which was a small bag of plaster and possibly a new bolt or two (the toilet needed to be re-set). I have reached out the the plumbing company and will be really curious about what they say. I have used them for 20 years and did not expect this.

argylerd | 11 years and 10 months ago

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Is he billing for travel to and from the job for each and every customer? I’ve never heard of anyone but movers charging for travel but it sounds like a great way to boost revenue from one time customers.

williamsburgguys | 11 years and 10 months ago

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I’ve been quoted this before for a different reason/type contractor and I passed. I don’t get paid to travel to my job every day, which can vary from 30 minutes to over an hour depending on how I get there, traffic, trains, etc. My time traveling is just as expensive as the next guys, and they aren’t actually working on the plumbing during this period. At the least they should simply build that into their bid and not list it explicitly. I will not be paying for someone’s travel time (listed on a bill) for them to get to their job until I get the same in mine. Maybe you can counter-bill for the time you had to miss work while waiting for them to arrive since they were not actually working on your job during that time either 🙂 Realistically, not sure what recourse you have other than to demand the bid on paper in advance in the future so you can ensure the charges you will be paying for. I would not use this firm again and would list your experience on Yelp.

mruby36 | 11 years and 10 months ago

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If you were not made aware and had acknowledged ahead of time… and are asking the question… then we all know the answer is — heck no — Would travel time be less if traffic was not as bad? It can take an hour to go a few blocks sometimes but time management goes with the territory. Perhaps the person who does the billing adds this in and the person who was at your house is focused on the work itself and time spent onsite. This still sounds out of line and you should have been made aware of such a policy before anyone was dispatched to your place. Did anyone mention this when you first called? If not, it seems fair to pay the onsite time only, but I don’t know all the circumstances. Best of luck! Matt R www-nyc-hs.com