E.C. Schmidt Plumbing Contractor, Inc.

The customer had called the office for a service call to unclog his kitchen sink.  He asked how much it would cost him and the girl told him we charge $79.00 hr with a minimum of 2 hours and $50.00 for service truck and tools/trip chg/fuel & insurance.  It was not a base bid...

price and was an estimated quoted price.  The secretaries do not know exactly how long the job will take.  Even though we are close to the customer, our serviceman had to come all the way from Tri-County area.  We don't just have people sitting around waiting on service calls.  The serviceman went out to fill out his "Job and Material Labor Sheet", not an invoice, for the customer to sign, which he did.  The serviceman put on there 1 1/2 hrs, the service trip charge and a small sewer machine (which we did not charge for).  The customer signed the ticket.  If the customer had a problem with it in the beginning then he should not have signed it and called the office.  He called the office after the serviceman had left and spoke with the same girl and was arguing with her about it.  She told him several times that she is not the one who does the billing that he would need to talk the owner.  The owner called him back later that afternoon and was explaining to him his charges and that he only charges what the serviceman puts on the ticket.  He seemed fine with it and was ok.

I received, over the phone, and have the recording of a verbal estimate given to me by a representative of Earl Schmidt pluming of 800.00 or less for work done on the main waterline at my house. The workers wanted to bring in a dump truck of sand. I asked them if it would cost more than the estimate, they said if it did I would be notified first. After completion of the job I received a bill of over 1700.00. I talked to the owner and he said oh well, we had to do more work and bring in the sand which cost more. I told him I was never notified of the extra cost ahead of time and told him his workers said I would be notified. He replied they don't know whats going on out there and then he told me his estimater told him that I was quoted a price of 800.00 to 2000.00 for the job. I have the estimation recorded from the phone and no where on the recording is the word, MORE, mentioned. In fact it says LESS than 800.00. The owner dropped the price to 1250.00 after talking to him prior to finding the estimated message on the phone. After recording the message and playing it for him and showing him an estimate I had from one of his competitors of 865.00 he said he had been more than fair and couldn't help me. Thank you. [redacted]