Einstein Plumbing and Heating

Complaint: ***I am rejecting this response because:
The signatures obtained are essentially meaningless because we were handed a tablet and told to sign with no ability to see what it was that we were signingNot sure if that's an acceptable business practice.
Again, the invoice emailed lataer contains no itemization nor a CCB number nor phone number.
We were able to apply perfectly presentable caulking to finish the project, as demonstrated by the before and after pictures attached
I am not pleased that the business' response to my Yelp review accuses me of dishonesty when every statement I made was entirely factual. Sincerely,*** ***

To whom it may concern - Mrs*** was given a full diagnostic of her issues with a full range of options for repairsAfter she selected the repair in question, our technician also gave Mrs*** a Military DiscountWe will reach out to the customer and try to resolve this as soon
as possibleThank you for your time

Mr [redacted] has buyers remorse for a job his wife approved our company to do with 3 signatures as seen on the attached invoice. The first being signature for payment, the second for work being completed to her satisfaction and the third after ach payment failed, a cc was processed. 
Here is the...

email response to Mr [redacted] via email and the same we responded when he gave us a 1-star review on Yelp. His big complaint it sounds like is that our apprentice pooped on the clock. However with upfront pricing, it's not possible to extend the clock and charge for pooping time. So that complaint is invalid. Mr [redacted] also states that there was no details on the invoice. Not only are there signatures as indicated above, but you will also see that on the invoice we listed the price, the work done along with an issue the customer already knew about when ti comes to no backing and trouble caulking because of it.
Unfortunately in business you will never please them all and Mr [redacted] appears to be one of them. It's sad, but we do with him the best. 
 
Regards,
Jared L[redacted]
 
Subject: Wife feels we were overchargedHey there - I'm having some trouble explaining to my wife why we were charged $374 for less than an hour and half's work. There was some material cost in the form of a pop-up stopper and some silicon caulk, but that still seems to pencil out to more than $200 an hour.I see on popular websites that typically, plumbers charge an "average cost per hour ranging from $45 to $150." What are your rates, exactly? There is absolutely no itemization on the invoice, which I had no opportunity to review until it was emailed to me after the fact, as I was just handed an tablet and asked to sign. Thank you in advance for kindly clarifying this situation. We'd prefer not to have to take our questions to the Revdex.com, contractor's board, Yelp, credit card company, etc.Regards,[redacted]
 
Sent: Monday, December 26, 2016 10:01 AMSubject: Re: Wife feels we were overcharged
Hi [redacted],
As a for profit plumbing service company, it’s a fine line for sure in showing up to a clients home such as yours, performing work and hoping in the end that both sides feel good about it. With your specific job, I’d like to be very transparent and break down the cost of your job and profit margin. 
First in looking at the job, I see we had a 37 minute drive time and 1 hour 18 minutes on the job, plus 15 min for post call paperwork. For simplicity we’ll round this to 2hr 15min hours even. 
Hard Cost
=================
Labor Burden Journeyman (2hr 15min x $54.60) = $122.92
Labor Burden Apprentice (2hr 15min x $19.33) = $43.49
*Note that labor burden is hourly, taxes, insurance, medical, dental, vision, vacation, etc. factored in. The actual is $42/hr for journeyman and $14.35 for apprentice
You found us Online through one of our marketing campaigns which cost us $15-$25 per click. On average we book 1 out of 4, meaning customer acquisition on a new client = $80 on average. It’s repeat business and referrals where our company has breathing room to make a profit. 
Office Staff took your initial call of 4min 47secs plus after call scheduling/paperwork, comes out to 15min x $23.62/hr = $5.91
Materials for new pop-up, caulking, misc, was $27.60 + the time it takes to pick these up from a supply house to have them on the truck saving a complete round trip should we not have come prepared. So to be fair let’s call this 15 mins Labor Burden since they picked up supplies as a grouping with other products for other calls, so for both guys instead of a 1.5 hour round trip for your specific needs, we’ll dial it back to ($27.50 materials + $18.48 labor burden) = $45.98
Transportation, for an easy break down we’ll call it out at $0.65/mile to cover fuel, insurance, maintenance, debt servicing, etc. (15 miles x $0.65) = $9.75
Now to cover phones, utilities, internet, computers, businesses licensing, after service paperwork for bookkeeper, etc, our expenses are $22/call. 
Total hard cost for your specific job: $330.05 = 13% profit margin before any other company expenses. 
======================
Our company strives for a 0-15% profit margin with the hopes that we can continue to grow and even have a little extra at the end of the day for our founders to make a profit as well. We pride ourselves on answering our phones, sending out licensed, bonded and insured journeyman plumbers to service your plumbing needs. I hope that this break down helps in understanding what takes place behind the scenes as well and that you can feel a bit better as to why the price was what Ron presented and charged to you on the 21st this month. 
I’ve attached an Einstein Finance 101 that our founders have put together should you like to review. If you need anything further, do let me know.
Thanks,
Travis L[redacted]
Operations Manager 
Oregon & Washington Region
 
 
On Tue, Dec 27 at 7:01 AM , [redacted] [redacted]<[redacted]@yahoo.com> wrote:
Mr. L[redacted],
I appreciate the time and energy you put into this explanation. Unfortunately, I remain less than satisfied with its details. 
The general gist is that you have a lot of overhead costs that you need to cover in order to make a reasonable profit. The inefficiencies of your business model are not the customer's concern or problem, but they do go a long way towards explaining why your prices are inordinately high. It seems to me that the general public will benefit from knowing that when they use your company, the prices will have to be high to cover all of that. 
More specifically, I find it curious that the price includes the hourly time of the apprentice, whose sole contribution to this project was to make a trip to the truck to retrieve a wrench and the plumbing parts, and a second trip to the truck to get the caulk and the caulk gun.  suppose that's how the system works in order for the next generation of plumbers to be trained, but doesn't that mean that customers pay more for jobs if they happen to have an apprentice along for the ride, but don't actually derive any benefit? 
In this case, the majority of the appointment time the apprentice was not even on site. Between his two small errands, he jumped in the truck and drove off. When I casually asked Ron where he had gone, Ron responded that he needed to use the bathroom. When I commented we had a bathroom upstairs, Ron responded, "he needed to go number two." It seems like I got charged for the time that your apprentice spent driving back and forth to some public restroom and the time he spent pooping. I imagine the travel time and mileage I got charged probably covered the extra distance traveled by the truck for this purpose. Calculating how to account for the extra mileage on the truck no doubt added to the time spent on post-appointment paperwork. 
Additionally, the time and material spent on caulking the sink (and sending the apprentice out to the truck to retrieve the caulk gun and caulk) was wasted. The job was done in such butt ugly fashion that we have ripped out that caulk and will be replacing it. 
While I admire the commitment you demonstrate by putting a considerable amount of time in responding to my concerns, my concerns are only very partially alleviated. Please let me know whether there is anything more you can do to satisfy us.
Regards,
[redacted] [redacted].